“When I realized she was pregnant, I offered to kill my father so that we could be together. Do you know what she said to me?” he said, leaning into her just a bit like they were sharing a juicy secret. “She said, ‘Michael will take care of us.’ ” For a moment, he looked toxic—like a simple touch from him could kill.
Sabrina imagined them standing face to face like they were now. Lydia, outwardly defiant even while facing down her own rapist. Estefan, so sick he couldn’t even recognize that what he was doing to her was wrong.
“Michael.” He spat the word at her, his lips twisted into an ugly smile. “I realized then that he was the reason she would never love me.”
“From a female perspective, I gotta tell you,” she said quietly, “it was all the raping that made it impossible for her to love you.”
If they’d been closer, she was certain he would have hit her—and not an open-palmed slap like his father had given her, either. He would have hit her with a closed fist and more than once.
He stood, and she took a step back, dropping in a defensive stance that told him the violence he had in mind would not go as smoothly as he was used to. Her hip bumped into the vanity, her sudden movement answered by that faint rattling again.
“Lydia believed he was her savior. That he could protect her from my father.” Estefan smirked, reading her posture perfectly, and changed courses. “From me.” He reached up to finger the scar that ran down the length of his face, and for a moment she could see just how much he hated both Michael and his father. How twisted he had grown living in their shadows.
You’re runnin’ out of time here, darlin’ … tick tock.
As if on cue, a metallic click filled the silence between them and her eyes automatically darted to the clock perched on the mantel just over his shoulder. It was nine o’clock, and the sound she’d just heard was the auto-lock engaging on her bedroom door.
Eighty-Two
The receiver he’d put in his ear hissed and crackled seconds before Ben’s voice came online. “You ready for this?”
Michael adjusted the straps on his parachute while watching Church do a pre-jump check on Strickland’s rig. He was about to jump out of an airplane with a hapless cop and Livingston Shaw’s pet spy. “I was ready an hour ago.”
“So you keep saying.” Ben chuckled. “If you had your way, you’d have swum to the island hours ago with a KA-bar clenched in your teeth and a live grenade in each fist.”
His partner was right. It was what his instincts were telling him to do. What they always told him to do: Save her. Protect her. He’d been ready to go the second he stepped foot off the plane, and he would have gone if Ben hadn’t been there to stop him.
“There’s no way to tap into the compound’s security feed; I’m going to have to cut the cameras completely, so once you’re in, I can’t be your eyes,” Ben said, going over the plan for what seemed like the fiftieth time. “Give me a check-in when you hit the island and another when you make the mountain. I’ll kill comms and cameras then.”
“Got it,” he said. “What I don’t got is an explanation on why you’re running interference while Lark rides the pine.” When they’d left, Lark had been nothing more than a pair of hulking shoulders hunched over a bank of computer screens, so intent on what he was doing that he hadn’t even looked up when they left.
“I told you, he’s got more important things to do,” Ben said. “Trust me.”
“Not even as far as I could throw you.”
Ben laughed again. “Then trust that I hate my father and take great pleasure in ruining his day.”
Michael felt a smirk coast across his mouth. That was as close to an answer as he was going to get from his partner. “That I do trust,” he said, cutting the mic as soon as Church turned toward him. She’d traded her jeans and Einstein T-shirt for standard-issue FSS garb—dark fatigues and long-sleeved shirt—and her honey-colored hair was pulled away from her exotic-looking face. He remembered what Shaw had said about her. Born in America but raised to hate everything it stood for and then abandoned there by the country that was supposed to be her family’s home. The term issues had to be an understatement.
She approached him, stepping around so she could stand behind him. He moved to turn, not comfortable having her at his back. She grabbed him by the shoulders and stopped him mid-turn. “I need to check your rig,” she said, her tone slightly exasperated, like she was talking to an unreasonable child who was trying her patience.
“I’ll let you do me,” he said, turning against her hands until they were standing face to face, “if you let me do you.”
She pushed a smile onto her face and batted her eyelashes at him, fluttering them around the dark hazel of her eyes. “What would Sabrina think?”
“That I’m right not to trust you,” he deadpanned.
She dropped the act completely and suddenly she was the no-nonsense woman he knew, the medical tech who examined him after each mission. “Just in case you missed it, the enemy is down there,” she said, nodding her head to the side. “He’s got your girl, not me. I’m here to help you get her back.”
He stared at her, could feel Strickland behind him, watching the exchange. “Why?”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “Let’s take it from the top, shall we? Shaw wants the Maddox boy back. He also wants you and the little incentive program she represents to you intact. That means Sabrina lives.”
Shaw had been content to keep him ignorant of the fact that he not only knew about Sabrina, but that he’d been controlling her for over a year—she’d been his ace in the hole. Now that Michael was aware, Shaw knew that there would be no pulling his strings without her dangling over his head. It was either lose him or save her.
And Livingston Shaw hated to lose.
Church was still talking. “There are too many objectives in this mission for you to hit all your marks alone.” No longer antagonistic, she was now the voice of reason. “You need me.”
“Like a fucking hole in my head,” he muttered, but she was right and they both knew it.
“I’ll make you a deal, O’Shea. I give you my absolute word that you can trust me completely for the next four hours.”
“What if Shaw changes his mind? What if he decides he wants us dead?” Shaw could kill him anytime he wanted, but his death wasn’t the issue. It was always looming, inevitable. But Shaw would need more than a phone code and password to kill Sabrina.
He’d need someone on the ground. Loyal. Capable.
Someone like Church.
He could see that she was conflicted; the stress of it played across her face, but only for an instant. She reached into the long pocket of her fatigues and pulled out her cell, offering it to him. “I can give you four hours—take it or leave it.”
Michael hesitated for only a moment before he took it.
Eighty-Three
Ben listened to the exchange between Michael and Church, a slight frown resting on his face. Church couldn’t be trusted, and his partner knew it—but he was also desperate. Desperation often turned smart people stupid. For Michael’s sake, he hoped his father’s minion was on the level.
“We’ve reached jump altitude,” Reese Harrison’s voice came through with minimal interference. So clear that Ben could hear the unease in his tone.
“Got something on your mind?” Ben said, keeping the question casual, but the pilot’s instincts were usually spot on. If there was a reason he was feeling anxious, he wanted to hear it.
“No … yes.” A short sigh that might have been a snort. “I don’t fucking know—maybe.”
“Getting dizzy. And bored … ” He used his smartass remark to cover up the fact that Harrison’s trepidation bothered him.
“Okay. Church spent a lot of time on her phone while we were here waiting for you guys, mostly getting chewed out by your dad. Apparently, she was suppo
sed to make a clean sweep of Sabrina’s friend and anyone else who was in the house when she went in for the extraction.”
Ben didn’t have to ask what that meant. Church had been ordered to kill Val, or anyone who’d been there when she had been sent in to bring Sabrina out. Harsh? Yes, but you didn’t maintain a covert cover by allowing people who’ve seen your face to live to tell about it.
“Is he sending in a scrub team?”
“Yeah …” Harrison hadn’t been on the FSS payroll long, but before flying medevac he’d been a Nightstalker—a Special Forces helicopter pilot charged with flying elite military in and out of their most dangerous missions. He was no stranger to high-pressure situations, and he never balked at following orders. It was what made him so valuable. Too valuable to kill when he’d recognized Michael in the field and made himself a liability.
“You could have told me this sooner, numb nuts,” he said evenly.
“That crazy bitch had a gun pointed, literally, at my dick the entire time you and I were on the phone. I was afraid to breath, much less talk.” Harrison sighed. “There’s something else.”
“Fuck it all … of course there is.” He ground the heel of his hand into one of his closed lids and felt the gritty rub of adrenaline and not enough sleep scrape across his eye. “Well, you gonna make me guess?”
“He’s on his way here. He told Church he’d be landing around three a.m. He’s coming for Michael. Doesn’t trust you to bring him in. And … I think she wanted me to know that. She held the phone away from her ear so I could pick up parts of the conversation.”
There was no around with his father. He knew exactly when he’d be here, down to the minute. If he’d said three a.m., Ben gathered he’d be here no later than midnight. That meant they had less than four hours to get in, get the Maddox boy, and get out.
“Can you stop him?” Harrison’s voice was thick with worry.
Him was his dad, and stopping him had never been easy. “Yeah, I can stop him,” he said, ending the call. He pressed his thumb, hard and heavy into the keypad for a moment before he dialed his father.
“Call them off.”
His father sighed. “Benjamin—”
“Goddamned it, Dad—call them off!” he bellowed it into the phone, his thick shell of who gives a fuck cracking wide open.
“They pose a risk. A risk Courtney should have eliminated immediately.” He sounded annoyed. “She understood the parameters: no witnesses. Why is that such a hard concept to grasp?” he said, like taking a life was as easy a task as taking out the trash or re-capping the toothpaste after brushing your teeth.
A smartass remarked bubbled on Ben’s lips but he held it, his brain circling around something Church had said to them not more than a few hours before.
Unlike the rest of you fuckwits, I follow orders. I did what I could for her within those parameters.
Clever girl.
“There are no witnesses.”
His father made a sound he’d heard more than once, one reserved for proven liars and people who generally pissed him off.
“Whatever Church used to incapacitate Valerie Nickels punched a huge hole in her memory,” he said, relief washing over him. “She can’t remember anything past Sunday night. She and her baby were the only ones who had contact with her besides Sabrina and me. No one else knows who she is.” He chose to ignore the fact that Sabrina’s partner not only knew who she was, he was now on a first-name basis with her.
His father was quiet for a moment, mulling over what he’d been told, pretending to discount the truth he must’ve heard in his son’s voice. “That’s hardly a guarantee, is it, son?” he said, his cadence smoothing out, wrapping silk around each word.
He knew instantly that his father had no intention of calling off anything. Oddly enough, it was Mandy, Sabrina’s doctor friend who popped into his head. She wasn’t there when Church had taken Sabrina, but that mattered little. His father would wipe out everyone involved in this mess. If his father had his way, none of them would live.
“Fine. I’ll do it.”
“Do what?” his father said. No longer smooth, he seized onto the words almost immediately, not wanting to give Ben time to change his mind.
“You know what. I’ll do it. Just call them off.” He sighed. Nearly choked on the words that came next. “Please, Dad.”
His father was quiet for a few moments before answering. “Why do these people matter to you so much, Benjamin?”
It was the one thing he didn’t know. The one question he couldn’t answer, so he didn’t. Just sat quietly, waiting for his father to either agree to his terms or not.
“Very well,” his father finally said. “I’ll call them off … and I expect you to keep your promise.”
“Keeping promises has never been my problem, Dad—that’s yours,” Ben said before hanging up the phone.
Eighty-Four
They took the jump at eighteen thousand feet. It was high enough so that Reyes’s guards wouldn’t notice the plane circling the island but not so high that they’d need the equipment for a high-altitude jump.
Falling through the dark, Michael could see the lights of the compound winking in the distance. Sabrina was in there somewhere, locked away like Lydia had been. Held against her will.
The thought of it had him moving into a free fall, head pointed toward the earth, arms straight and tight against his sides as he rocketed through the sky. He pulled his chute at the last possible second, less than two thousand feet above the ground. The landing was hard, his boots barely touching down before he hit the emergency release on his rig. He stumbled a bit but found his feet quickly, running for the cover of the trees that surrounded the small clearing he’d chosen as their drop zone.
Turning, he fell into a crouch to watch the others fall. Like him, Church waited until the last possible second to pull her chute, and she tumbled, shoulder first, as she tucked herself into the fall, cutting her chute as soon as she sprang to her feet. She was beside him a few seconds later, hunkered down, expression hidden by the deep shadows of the trees they squatted beneath.
Strickland was last, having pulled his chute at a more prudent altitude. Michael watched as he landed, boots first, taking a few running hops before he managed to find the ripcord that would release the chute. He was rusty, but beneath the rust was a confidence that surprised him.
This wasn’t Strickland’s first rodeo.
Michael watched Strickland jog across the clearing to join them. “Something you feel like sharing with the rest of the class, Christopher?” Church said before he had a chance to say anything. Her voice was quiet, carrying no farther than the tight circle they formed in the dark.
He could see the bright flash of teeth in the gloom as Sabrina’s partner shot Church a smile. “Not really,” Strickland said, looking at him. “What’s the plan?”
Michael hadn’t told them anything before they’d boarded the plane beyond assuring them that he had a way inside. He hadn’t wanted to risk tipping his hand with Lark around and even now, he was having a hard time coming clean with Church so close. Stalling, he pressed a finger into his ear. “All boots on the ground,” he said into his comm, and it crackled in response. “Moving toward our next rally point.”
“Roger that,” Ben said. “Once I kill comms you’ll have to move fast. It won’t take the guards very long to realize they can’t communicate.”
Michael knew better. It was after nine o’clock. According to Hector, Reyes evacuated the island every night. There was no one left to call. Reyes was alone on the island, waiting for him.
“I’ll let you know when we’ve reached the mountain,” he said before clicking off his comm.
Reaching into the pocket of his fatigues, he pulled out his compass. The soft greenish glow of its arrow pointed northwest. He turned his body until it rotated by a few degrees.
Church grabbed his arm and spun him, her face held tight in a scowl. “That’s not the mission. Sabrina and the Maddox kid—that’s why we’re here.”
“She’ll know where they’re holding him,” he said. “Enlisting her help will make things go a lot smoother.”
Church glared at him. “She takes us to the boy, but we leave her here.”
Michael could still see Christina standing at her bedroom window, staring down at him. She hadn’t known what was happening. She hadn’t understood that her father was about to kill her mother. But she’d known he was going to leave her.
“I’m not leaving here without her.” Not again.
She shook her head. “We’re not kidnapping Reyes’s daughter.”
“Think of it more as a rescue. Besides, you told me you were mine for four hours—whatever I needed.” He smirked at her when she swore under her breath. “Is that a yes?”
She let go of him and snatched the map out of Strickland’s hand. “I never liked you,” she muttered while studying it.
“Same goes, sweetheart,” he said before turning toward Strickland again. “She won’t go easily. She’s been trained to resist abductions and since she doesn’t know you, she’ll think that’s what this is. We had a code word: pink pony. Say it as soon as you have eyes on her and she’ll cooperate.” Even as he said it, he wasn’t sure. He’d let her mother die, left her alone when he’d promised otherwise. What if she hated him? He wouldn’t blame her if she did.
Strickland looked at him for a moment. “I’ve got to go with Church on this one—I didn’t tag along to rescue some drug cartel princess.”
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