Protection Detail

by Julie Miller

  He handed her one of the waters, and the other beer to Jeff, who swallowed a long draft before reminding them of a pledge they’d made earlier. “Don’t forget, at the end of the evening, we’ll toast Mary.”

  Mutt stood and raised his bottle. “And all the friends and fellow airmen and women we’ve lost along the way.” He held his hand out to Jane. “My turn again?”

  When he saw that stress dimple appear on her forehead, Thomas set down their glasses and took her hand instead. “I appreciate your willingness to help, boys. But how about you let me dance at least once with my own date?” Jeff eyed his bum leg. And was that a snicker he heard from Mutt? “Yes, I can dance.”

  Jeff clapped him on the shoulder and nudged them out to the dance floor as a slow song started. “We’ll see you at eleven.”

  Thomas turned Jane into his arms and settled into a swaying rhythm. “Thank you for the rescue. Between these high heels and Mutt’s toe stomping, my feet are killing me.” Her hand slid from his shoulder to the nape of his neck, teasing the sensitive skin there as she summoned a weary smile. “But they have been as attentive as good watchdogs. One or the other or both have been with me all evening, whenever you’re not here.”

  “I trust those yahoos with my life. I trust them with yours, too.”

  A few more seconds of him enjoying her hips butting against his ended with the sobering question he knew she wanted to ask. “Have you seen anyone who looks suspicious?” He’d just come back from slyly checking with every undercover operative here. Conor serving drinks. Duff posing as one of the security guards at the front entrance. Keir in the van and Hud keeping watch for anything suspicious outside. Niall in the hotel’s security office, watching live camera feeds from several monitors. “Do you think he’s here? Watching me right now?”

  He leaned in to kiss that frown on her forehead, willing the mark to relax. “Everybody’s watching you. You’re the most beautiful woman here, and they’re all wondering how I got so lucky.”

  For a moment, her lips softened into a genuine smile. “Trust me, Thomas—I’m the lucky one. I’m sorry you’re not getting to enjoy your reunion.”

  “I’ve had enough conversations with old cronies to catch up.” He pulled her a few inches closer and surveyed the packed room, abuzz with laughter and music and conversation, for that one person who was more interested in them than in the reunion. “It was good to see my commanding officer from Lakenheath again. I can’t believe he’s ninety years old and still fits into his old uniform. I want to age like that.”

  She nodded her agreement, although her thoughts were already drifting. “Are you certain they’ll be here?”

  “My aching bones, and a little profiling, tell me yes.” He stopped moving and caught her shoulders between his hands, gently rubbing away the chill he felt on her skin. She hadn’t complained once, hadn’t admitted her fear. And that kind of bravery in the face of waiting danger had to be wearing on her. “Do you need a break from the spotlight?”

  “I could use a stop at the ladies’ room.”

  “I’ll walk you out.”

  After a quick stop at the table to retrieve her purse and let Mutt and Jeff know they were free to socialize with the other guests for a few minutes, they headed toward the exit doors and the quieter public area and restrooms beyond. They were waylaid by a table of former members of Thomas’s training class who wanted to meet Jane and chat. By the time they reached the exit doors, the band was taking a break and the commander was back up onstage to honor more of their esteemed guests and the volunteers who’d help put the reunion together. Other guests were filing back in and turning their attention to the stage.

  With a hand at the small of Jane’s back, Thomas turned her away from the line of women waiting at the nearest restroom and they walked around the corner to search for another facility. But there they ran into the spill-out crowd from a function in a neighboring ballroom. Jane stopped for a second and groaned. “I just needed a few minutes of quiet and some fresh air.”

  “How are your feet holding up?”

  “Well, I’d rather not go for a hike right now.”

  “Let’s find an empty sofa and have a seat out here.” But it was a busy night at the hotel, and locating a free spot where two people could sit together wasn’t easy to come by.

  By the time they’d walked the length of the carpeted hallway and turned back, the security guard stationed near the elevators asked if they were lost. “We’re looking for a place to sit and relax for a few minutes.”

  The young man smiled and pushed the elevator call button for them. “Two floors up. There’s a walkway over to the adjoining hotel across the street. It’s less crowded there.”

  “Thank you.” Jane smiled up at him and stepped onto the elevator when the doors opened.

  The guard followed Thomas in behind her. “I’ll ride up with you.”

  The doors were already closing when Jane’s tired brain realized what she’d just seen.

  One brown eye, and one blue.

  “You!”

  He fired the Taser in his hand at Thomas, hitting him in the chest and stunning him before he could reach the gun at his back.

  “Thomas!” She caught him in her arms and collapsed to the floor with him as the guard slid a key card into the slot beside the door, overriding the second-floor command and taking them down to the basement garage.

  Chapter Twelve

  Thomas woke up with one hell of a headache battering against his skull. His chest felt as though he’d met the front grille of a speeding Mack truck. What time was it? Where was he?

  But sitting up to take some deep breaths and get his bearings proved almost impossible because he couldn’t get his hands to cooperate to push himself up.

  “Thomas?” He heard the urgently hushed whisper of a woman’s voice. Jane’s voice. “Oh, thank God. Are you okay?”

  Suddenly, there was enough adrenaline pumping through his system to clear his head and blink his surroundings into focus.

  The first thing he saw was Jane’s face. Brave, beautiful Jane, more worried about him than she was for herself. Her eyes were dark and unreadable in the rocking metal box they were in. A van. The back of a van. And the reason he couldn’t push himself up was because his hands were tied together and secured over his head to the grate that separated the van’s storage compartment from the driver in the cab.

  Although there was little feeling left in his hands, he curled his fingers into the grate and pulled himself up to a more comfortable sitting position. His ankles were tied together and his leg was protesting however he’d been dragged and dumped in the back of the moving van. Jane was bound in a similar fashion with a familiar blue nylon rope, far enough away from him that they could do little to help each other escape. He felt the empty space at the back of his belt and knew his gun was gone. But his head was clear and they were both still alive. And he had more backup than their kidnapper could ever imagine.

  He peered through the grate to see the silhouette of the driver in a black security guard’s uniform, and the passing streetlights as they drove through the city. He looked around at the rusted empty interior. The cage between them and the cab was locked. There was some trash bouncing along with them in the back, as well as with a coil of the blue nylon rope with an ominous noose tied at the end. Two little dots of light flashed through the back door, and he realized he was looking through a pair of tiny holes that went clear through to the outside.

  Bullet-sized holes.

  “The white van?” He kept his voice as low as Jane’s, so their conversation wouldn’t be overheard.

  “We’re in it.” They jolted over a bump that pulled at their wrist bindings and she winced. “He had me tie you in first.”

  “You tied me up?”

  The burst of hope that there was an easy way o
ut of this quickly dissipated. “Sorry. He checked my handiwork and tightened the knots. He Tasered you a second time when you started to come around.”

  That explained the rock on his chest. “Any idea where we are?”

  “I can’t be certain, but he always seems to be turning left, like we’re going around in circles. I don’t know if he’s lost or he’s trying to disorient us—”

  “Or he’s killing time until he meets his accomplice.” He inclined his head toward the driver. “Is that...?”

  Jane nodded. “I saw his eyes in the elevator before he tagged you. And I struggled when he tied me up. I pulled at his collar and saw the quote tattoo. It’s him.”

  When she turned her head away to tamp down the memories and emotions, he saw that the front of her dress had been sliced open from one shoulder down to her cleavage. The rage that lit in his belly nearly blinded him. “What did he do to you?”

  Jane glanced toward the cab as he raised his voice above a whisper. But the traffic noise and earbuds the driver was wearing must have been loud enough to mask it. Jane reminded him to whisper. “He didn’t hurt me. He said he wasn’t supposed to yet.” What the hell did that mean? She was the witness he wanted dead. The fact that he was keeping her alive only confirmed to Thomas that Badge Man was now working with a partner, and that whoever that partner was had a very personal connection to Thomas. “He knew about our trackers. He took them.” Jane leaned back against the metal wall of the van. “No one will know where we are. What are we going to do?”

  He stretched his legs out to touch her bare foot with his shoe because that was the only comfort he could give her. He should be happier about being right. His experience had told him exactly where tonight would lead. Only, seeing Jane tied up like a lamb for slaughter kept him from feeling good about anything.

  Be a cop. Assess the situation. Learn the facts. Know what you’re up against before you act.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Ten, fifteen minutes.”

  Thank God he had a partner who could keep her head in a crisis. As long as he kept her focused, Jane would stay in the moment with him and be an asset. “Do you know how many times we’ve turned?”

  She shrugged, thinking. “Maybe six times. And we haven’t gone very fast, so I’m sure we’re still in the city.”

  “Six turns, we’re probably still in the same neighborhood.” That meant help wouldn’t be too far away. If it could find them. He turned to inspect the knots around his wrists. “The first thing we need to do is find a way to free ourselves.”

  “His knife and Taser are in the front seat with him. Along with your gun.”

  “Then we need to get him to bring those weapons back here to us.”

  Her eyes widened. “What?”

  He curled his fingers into the grate again and jiggled it. A couple of the screws securing it to the ceiling were missing. He wasn’t a superhero, but he did know how to make himself heard. He glanced over at Jane, silently telling her to grab hold of the grate, too. “Make some noise.”

  They rattled the loose grate and yelled at the driver, startling him enough to make him pull out those earbuds and warn them to be quiet. They rattled the grate again. Thomas warned him he was a cop and that his actions were being monitored. Jane got her feet beneath her and stood up, threatening Badge Man in a tone that made Thomas proud and a little wary about ever getting on her bad side. “You stop this van right now!”

  “Shut up!” the driver ordered, swerving into a different lane. “Stop it!”

  They yelled louder and banged and threatened and rattled until the driver skidded them into a sharp left turn and braked to a sudden stop that knocked Jane off her feet. They’d pulled into a warehouse or garage somewhere. Thomas heard the rattle and bang of a large door closing and hurried footsteps across pavement before the back door swung open. He smelled the fumes of gasoline and oil and caught a glimpse of old brick and a rack of tires before the man climbed in and shut the van door behind him.

  Thomas knew crazy when he saw it. He’d studied enough criminals to recognize it. Reasoning with him wasn’t going to work.

  “I said to shut up, Officer,” he warned, sliding along the far wall toward Jane. “Not one more peep out of you or I’ll kill you first and carve you up. She missed the show the last time. I’ll make sure she sees exactly how I choke the life out of you, Daddy.”

  “I’m not your father. I would never hurt you.”

  “I said shut up! I’m in control here.”

  Jane was visibly shaking by the time the younger man tucked the Taser into his pocket and pulled out his knife to cut her loose from the grate. Was that fear? Anger? One could paralyze her. He prayed it was the other, and that she was thinking ahead to the next step like he was.

  “My feet, too,” she argued boldly. “Unless you want to drag me everywhere.”

  With an annoyed huff, he sliced through the knots at her ankles, then dragged her to her feet. Jane swayed against him, knocking him into the side of the van. “Hey!”

  He screamed a hateful epithet at her and yanked on her bound wrists, pulling her up against him as he raised the knife. But Jane tangled her feet with his, tripping him as he lunged. They landed on top of Thomas’s legs, sending a jolt of pain through him. But the pain told him he was alive and that he could put those legs to good use. When the attacker’s hand hit the floor, he lost his grip on the knife. He rolled off Thomas, pinned Jane beneath him and closed his hands around her throat, stopping her scream. When he rose to crush her windpipe for a second time, Thomas kicked him in the side of the face with both feet, knocking him off Jane and stunning him.

  “The knife! Get the knife!” Thomas yelled.

  Jane pushed up to her hands and knees, searching for the weapon that could even out the odds in this fight. But the moment she spotted it and lunged for it, so did Badge Man. He shoved her aside and outreached her. Thomas kicked him again, this time drawing blood from the split skin on his cheek.

  Badge Man instantly turned his rage on Thomas, backhanding him across the mouth, then punching him from the other side. He tasted the coppery tang of blood in his mouth. His vision blurred as the man with free hands hit him again and again.

  “You. Can’t. Hurt. Me...”

  His attacker froze with his fist in the air. His eyes were wide, his pupils tiny pinpoints. Tremors shook his body. Thomas’s senses cleared long enough to hear the distinct buzz of an ongoing electric shock. The young man was still convulsing when he fell onto his side on the floor. Thomas followed the two wires up to the Taser in Jane’s hands, and on up to the ferocious anger stamped on her beautiful face.

  “Jane. Jane!” He called to her a second time. Her gaze darted from her target to him, and he gently spoke again. “He’s out, honey. You can stop.”

  She dropped the weapon, pushed their kidnapper aside and picked up the knife. She cut Thomas’s wrists free, then his feet. By the time she’d handed him the knife so he could slice through the rope that still bound her hands, she was kneeling beside him, plucking the handkerchief from his pocket and dabbing it against his split lip. This was his Jane, practical and efficient, determined to do what needed to be done. “Oh, God, you’re hurt. Now what?”

  He cupped her cheek in a quick caress before picking up the same ropes they’d been bound with and tying up their incapacitated serial killer. “Communication. And my gun.”

  Heaving a steadying breath, she checked the unconscious man again. “We’ll have to go around to the front to get them.” Ignoring the twinge in his leg, he pushed to his feet. “Let’s go.”

  Jane nodded and hurried to the back door. But it opened a second time and she jumped back.

  The too-tanned skin of a receding hairline was a welcome sight.

  “Al. Thank God. You must have followed us. I need you to call—” Th
omas’s blood ran cold when Al snagged Jane’s wrist and pulled her in front of him, pinning his forearm around her neck and pressing the barrel of the gun he held against her temple. His actions didn’t make any sense. And then suddenly, everything made sense. “You son of a bitch.”

  “You always have to have everything your way. Don’t ya, Tommy boy?” When Thomas stepped over Badge Man’s inert body, Al shoved the gun hard enough to leave a mark on Jane’s skin. “Don’t come any closer. And you can lose the knife.”

  Thomas dropped the knife to the floor and put up his hands, freezing in place. He’d take the crazy boy over a betrayal like this any day. Why hadn’t he noticed the contempt in those familiar eyes before? “Why? Why do you want to hurt me like this?”

  “Because you hurt me.”

  The oddly critical comments. The failed marriages. Ah, hell. Al hadn’t been his friend all these years. He’d been keeping tabs on him, waiting for his moment to strike. “Mary.”

  Al nodded. “Mary.” He used his toe to pull the coiled blue rope toward him. Then he stooped down, lowering the gun just long enough to loop the noose around Jane’s neck.

  Her frightened gasp cut right through his heart. “Stay with me, honey.”

  She gave him as much of a nod as a woman with a gun to her head and a noose around her throat could manage. Good. If she flashed back into one of her fugue states, she’d be completely vulnerable. They didn’t have much of a chance here, but they had one.

  Al was someone he could reason with. “Let me guess, you blame me for Mary’s death. You fancied yourself in love with my wife.”

  “I don’t fancy anything. I loved her and she loved me.” Al jerked on the noose and Jane’s fingers flew to her throat. “She was there for me when my marriage broke up. She held me and listened. She was always there for me.”

  Thomas’s whole body tensed with an unfamiliar rage. It was a struggle to keep his voice calm. “You were part of the family, Al. She loved you like a brother. Like I did.”