Safe in His Arms

by Renee Rose

  It was a fortress, and getting into the compound would require weeks of preparation. No, the parade had been the best option. But that was too bad. He wouldn’t be there for it.

  When he got back to the hotel room, he called Becca’s work.

  The secretary’s voice sounded strained when he asked for Becca. “Who is calling?” she asked suspiciously, cuing his warning alarms.

  “Thomas Mulberry. Is she in?”

  “I’m sorry, I cannot give that information out,” she said tightly, and he was certain something was amiss.

  He called Marcus. “Hey. Ah…listen, can you do me a favor?”

  “What is it?” Marcus sounded tense. He blew out his breath. He hoped his instincts weren’t wrong.

  “Can you locate Becca and Parker for me?”

  “Why?” Marcus’s voice was sharp.

  “Ah, I just need confirmation of their location.”

  “Do you know where El Demo is?”

  “No. Can you do it?”

  “Okay, sure. But you’ll owe me.”

  “You know I always take care of you.”

  The phone disconnected.

  He tapped the table. Well, there was nothing else he could do but get on that plane and figure things out when he got there.

  Ten minutes later the phone rang next. “What’ve you got?”

  “Check your mail and call me back.”

  “Thanks.”

  He opened the laptop. Marcus had forwarded a photo that sent adrenalin pumping through his body. Becca and Parker were bound and gagged with duct tape, looking terrified. His balls tightened, as they always did in a life or death situation. He opened and closed his fist, dialing Marcus.

  “What the fuck?”

  “It’s all over the news, they’re missing. The photo was sent to the news stations.”

  “Beatty?”

  “I think it’s El Demo. Check this out.”

  Another email popped into his mailbox.

  “What is this?”

  “Flight reservations for two adults, one child to the Canary Islands. I’m tracing the names to issued passports, but it could fit. How much do you want to bet those two are supposedly killed by a bomb and never seen again?”

  “You think he’s going to fake their deaths?”

  “It fits, don’t you think?”

  It made sense logically, but Zac’s gut told him it wasn’t true. Why would El Demo need to fake their deaths when he already knew Zac was looking after them? Unless he didn’t trust Zac, which was possible. He ground his teeth.

  “I will keep looking here and I’ll send you the passport info as soon as I can hack in to get it—probably in the next hour.”

  Zac hung up without a word. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong about all of this. He paced about the hotel room. He threw a chair. Then he sat down on the edge of the bed and tried to focus. He’d never ghosted at will before, but maybe in this instance he could. Maybe because Parker needed him. He used every ounce of will to clear his mind and try to leave his body. But the sense of urgency pressuring him to succeed was exactly what kept him from finding any buoyancy to his consciousness. He kept at it, trying to recapture the desire to leave his body that had driven him out of it in the past.

  No luck.

  His phone rang in what seemed like just a few minutes, but had actually been over an hour. “I have the passports—it’s definitely them. I sent them to you.”

  Zac opened Marcus’s email and stared at the passport photos and aliases of Becca, Parker, and El Demo.

  “Their flight’s scheduled for this evening. Should I let Beatty know?”

  “No,” he barked. “Don’t do anything. Please.”

  “Can you get to the Canary Islands from where you are now?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.” He hung up and packed his bag, leaving the gun and vest hidden behind a wall board of the hotel. He didn’t notify his local contact of the change in plans; he simply checked out and headed for the airport.

  Fourteen hours later he arrived at San Diego International ready to crawl out of his skin, he was so wound up. The Canary Island tickets were a ruse, he was sure. Even though he hadn’t been successful in somehow connecting telepathically with Parker, he’d felt mounting distress from him the entire agonizing plane ride. Becca and Parker were in danger, serious danger and he was going to find them.

  He drove to his apartment, holstering two guns he kept in his car. Outside his apartment door, the hairs on his scalp stood on end.

  Someone was in there.

  He drew the Glock 27 he’d taken from his car and unlocked the door as quietly as possible. He was careful, standing behind walls for protection as he advanced silently through his place. Hearing the clicking of a keyboard, he crept to his office, then swung around the entryway, pointing the .40-caliber pistol directly at the head of the intruder, who at the same time, whirled and aimed a gun at him.

  El Demo. His eyes were alert in a worn, expressionless face.

  Zac paused only a second before he lowered his gun. Demo was not there to kill him. If he were, he wouldn’t do it sitting at his desk.

  He was there for intel.

  “You think I’d keep anything on my computer?”

  “I need the location of Marcus Smith.”

  Zac felt a rushing in his head as the puzzle rearranged itself and clicked together in his head.

  El Demo was after Marcus Smith.

  Marcus’s intel about the Canary Islands hadn’t made sense because he’d been misdirecting. Was it on Beatty’s orders? A dangerous determination sharpened within him.

  “Home address?”

  “No, current location. I need your password to the system.”

  He hesitated. Maybe it wasn’t Marcus misdirecting. Maybe El Demo needed to get his hands on more secrets to sell. Would he kidnap his own daughter and grandson to achieve those ends? He wouldn’t put it past him. Zac doubted he’d go so far as hurt them, but this could be a grand manipulation to make him believe they were on the same side.

  Demo held up his hands, palms out. “I don’t need to see it. You can drive—but there’s a way to trace his phone to his exact location.”

  “I don’t have clearance to trace the chips they put in our equipment.”

  “It’s not the chips. Every agent has the ability to trace calls.”

  Ah, a call trace. He shook his head. “He never stays on the line long enough.”

  “You’ll call him, and then I’ll call him while he’s on the phone with you, so he never disconnects.”

  “You have his number?” he asked suspiciously.

  Demo’s lips curled in a wry smile that looked more like a grimace. “He left his calling card with every photo,” he said, pointing at a printout of the photo of Becca and Parker, with the words, “If you have any information, please call” followed by a phone number.

  Zac nodded once. “Stand up and turn around. Put your hands on top of your head.”

  Demo complied slowly so Zac could track his movement. Keeping one eye on Demo, he logged into the system.

  “I’m in, you can turn around.”

  “You’ll log in one more time to the tracking page under data systems analysis,” Demo said, without turning around.

  Zac navigated, hoping nothing had changed in the eight years since Demo went AWOL. He did find a tracking page, which asked for his login. He repeated the process. “I’m in.”

  Demo turned around. “All right, you have his cell number, right? You’re going to plug it into that box there.”

  “It’s fully encrypted, you know.”

  “Of course I know,” Demo snapped.

  Zac entered the number. “Okay, hit the ‘find GPS location’ button. Now all we need is for him to use that phone, and we’ve got him. I’ll call first.”

  Demo dialed the number on the paper, which didn’t match the number Zac had for Marcus, but his number activated on the screen when he answered.

&n
bsp; Chapter Nine

  “Tips hotline.” Marcus was sitting in the window of the house across the street from the one where he left his prisoners and the bomb. He’d spent the night in there to watch them, but moved here at first light. This was a safer place for him, plus, the more he had to take care of their basic needs of food, water, and bathroom, the harder it was going to be to live with their deaths. The less contact, the better. It was going to be hard enough to press the detonator as it was, but it had to be done.

  “What do you want?” The unmistakable sound of El Demo’s deep growl rang in his ear. Bingo.

  “You.”

  “Fine. Let them go and you can have me.”

  His heart pounded, but he made his voice sound cool. “2204 Via Encantada. One hour.”

  “No,” Demo growled.

  “No?” he spluttered.

  “I’m not showing up till you let them go.”

  Another call was flashing in—his buddy Casper the Ghost. If he could just keep him out of the country, he could pull this off.

  “You’re not in a position to negotiate,” he snapped to El Demo and disconnected the call, transferring over to Casper.

  “Anything new for me?”

  “Nada. You in the Canary Islands?”

  “Yes, and they’re not here.”

  He swallowed. Did he sound accusatory? “You sure?”

  “Not one hundred percent. Did you verify if they got on the plane?”

  “No, you told me to do nothing.”

  “Right. True enough. Can you check the records to see if anyone used those tickets?”

  “Sure thing. I’ll do it right now.”

  “Thanks. Keep me posted.”

  He exhaled. Zac would stay out of the way and it would all be over in one more hour. “Will do.”

  After eight years living in fear that Demo would resurface and the truth would come out, he could put it all to rest. His wife and daughters could leave the safe house he’d placed them in yesterday, and he could forget the paranoia that had wracked him ever since he’d traded state secrets for the safe return of his family. Demo had helped him—had given him the idea of providing information on closed missions. Then Demo had provided cleanup once his family was safe and had killed the group responsible. Black Ops higher-ups had never known Marcus had been compromised in any way—the kidnapping and rescue remained a secret between him and Demo.

  He’d never intended for Demo to take the fall for it, but when the wind blew that way, fear for his own life made him duck his head and allow Demo to fend for himself. Demo had obliged by simply disappearing, solidifying suspicion against him. The only wrinkle had been his return.

  He blinked at the house. He thought he’d seen movement there. It was possible—make that highly likely—El Demo would enter the house from the rear, but he’d set up his position so that he had a clear view of Rebecca and her kid, so if he saw movement there, all he had to do was hit the detonator. Bombs were El Demo’s specialty, so the story he was fabricating—that Demo had faked the death of his daughter and grandson and escaped with them to the Canary Islands—would be plausible.

  The creak of a floorboard made him jump, his grip tightening on the detonator, the pistol in his other hand pointed to the door behind him. The possibility of El Demo finding him here had not entered his mind. He needed him to be in that building when he hit the detonator.

  Another creak made him whirl, and catching a flash of movement in the doorway behind him, he fired, clutching the detonator as he sprinted toward the relative safety of the wall near the door.

  “I’m holding the detonator to the bomb strapped to your daughter’s leg! Come out slowly with your hands in the air or I’ll blow her and the kid sky high.”

  Nothing but silence greeted him for a moment, then he heard Demo’s voice. “You don’t want to do that, Marcus. You’re not a killer.”

  Irritation flamed through him. He fired into the doorway to show he meant business. “You have to the count of five. One, two, three, four…”

  “All right,” Demo rumbled. “I’m coming out.”

  He looked ancient—the lines on his face had deepened to valleys and his eyes were dead. He advanced slowly with his hands in the air. “Open your jacket. Slowly.”

  Demo opened his jacket, revealing five guns strapped to his torso.

  “Put them on the floor, one at a time.”

  The sound of footsteps made them both turn, and he saw Demo draw his gun. His own gun was already pointed toward the doorway, but Demo’s move spurred a convulsive reaction in his other hand, and he squeezed the detonator to the bomb.

  “No!” Demo yelled as the deafening explosion sounded and Beatty rounded the corner, gun drawn and pointed at Demo.

  Marcus could not hear the gunshot, but he saw Demo’s finger pull the trigger of the gun pointed squarely at his head. His instinct to duck came too late. Even before the bullet struck him between the eyes, Marcus knew he was a dead man.

  * * *

  Crushed beneath Zac’s body, Becca clung to Parker in the stiff grass where they’d all been thrown to the ground. Zac’s arm was wrapped protectively over her head. She couldn’t hear anything—the sound of the explosion still rang in her ears as Zac dragged them to stand, hustling them away from the burning house where they’d spent the longest, most terrifying day and night of their lives.

  He’d arrived several minutes before and had cut her free of the bomb and thrown it into another room of the house, causing her to flinch in panic.

  “It’s all right,” he said calmly as he slit through the tape on her wrists and ankles. “It’s a C4 explosive; it won’t go off until the detonator’s hit.” He repeated the action on Parker’s bonds, then pulled them to their feet. “Can you walk? We need to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

  She had nodded, though her knees had buckled and he had to support her as they ran out. The bomb had exploded just seconds after they’d emerged from the house. Their backs had been pelted with debris, which was still raining down on them.

  Zac drew a gun and moved with a feline stealth, shielding both her and Parker’s bodies with his own as he corralled them alongside a house, then across the street. “Stay here,” he mouthed, or maybe he said it and she just couldn’t hear him. He crept up the stairs of the house. He was saying something again. She looked at his lips to decipher his words. “Hide in the bushes there. I’ll be back for you.”

  She turned to comply and then realized Parker had slipped past her and followed his father in. Shit. She, too, crept inside the house. Zac turned briefly and took in their presence, then continued on.

  “Don’t shoot.” His voice sounded muffled from the ringing in her ears, but even so, she could hear the perfect calm in it.

  “I already did, but he’s wearing Kevlar.” The voice that answered was equally unemotional.

  She sucked in her breath. Their captor lay dead in a pool of blood and next to him lay her father, who was bleeding from his ear, but still alive. Zac’s boss was standing over him with a gun pointed at his head.

  She pushed past Zac and dropped to her knees next to her father, picking up his hand and holding it her lap.

  “Lower your gun.” There was a threat in Zac’s voice that time and she looked up to see his gun pointing at his boss.

  Surprisingly, the boss complied, though he didn’t holster it. “Disarm him,” he ordered Zac.

  Zac crouched beside her and removed the guns strapped to her father’s torso. Parker appeared on the other side of her father and touched his shoulder. He turned to gaze at his grandson. “Hello, Parker,” he said, as if they were being introduced.

  “Hi,” Parker shouted, because he couldn’t hear well. “Are you going to die?”

  Her father shook his head. “No.” He lifted his shirt to reveal his Kevlar vest. “Not this time.” His gaze swiveled to the boss, as if challenging him to disagree.

  The flash of lights alerted her to the arrival of the fire truc
ks and only then did she detect their sirens through the ringing in her ears.

  “In my car, all of you,” the boss barked, flicking open his phone and dialing a number. “I need cleanup immediately,” he said into the receiver, giving the address as he shepherded them out a side door and holstered his gun. “We’re FBI,” he said to Zac, and the two of them pulled out FBI identification badges, which they showed to the police as they made their way through. Ninety minutes later they were all sitting in Becca’s living room, giving Beatty, the boss, each of their stories. Zac had Parker on his lap and an arm around her waist. Her father pressed a washcloth to his ear, which had been shot, but was apparently nothing more than a flesh wound. The ringing was still present in her ears, but she could hear over the background noise, if she concentrated. It was like listening to someone in a crowded restaurant.

  Her father’s story moved her to tears—his crimes were not as horrible as her imagination had created if he was to be believed. He’d committed them only to help Marcus recover his kidnapped family.

  “And then you disappeared—why?”

  Her father shrugged. “I was ready to be done with all of it, anyway. I’d already been forced to give up my family. I was tired of it. I didn’t mind taking the fall for Marcus and disappearing.”

  “Why was the Dark Angel out for you?” Zac asked. When she looked puzzled, he explained, “The nanny.”

  “I killed her partner when they stiffed me on a private job.”

  Becca felt sickened by the idea of her father as a hitman. But then, Zac was too, wasn’t he? He just did it for his country.

  Beatty considered her father with a shrewd expression. “I can remove the order on your head, but you’ll still stand trial for treason.”

  Becca’s mouth went dry. It didn’t seem right she should discover her father was alive, only to lose him so quickly to imprisonment.

  “However, if you happen to escape while under Agent Casper’s watch, I can’t help that, and I don’t have resources to hunt you.”