by Kylie Brant
She froze. When he opened his mouth to make a cynical remark, she shook her head furiously at him and waved him off the bed, pointing to the bathroom.
Just as adamant, he crossed his arms and stayed put. Damned if he was going to cower in the next room just because Travis had stopped by to further his cause with Macy. It’d do the man good to have a little company, in any case. The last thing he needed was more encouragement.
But he hadn’t reckoned on Macy’s reaction. “Just a minute,” she called. “I’m on the phone.” Then she strode to the bed and wordlessly ordered him off it again. Amused, he patted the spot on the bed beside him in silent invitation.
His amusement faded in the next instant when she reached across the space and pinched him. Hard.
“Ow!” Her free hand clapped across his mouth to muffle the sound. Damn the woman, she had a grip like a mastiff. And apparently knew the tender underside of the arm was a surefire way to ensure compliance.
Yanking away, he rolled to the side of the bed and rose, going toe-to-toe with her. Silently he mouthed, “You’re going to pay for that.”
Macy kicked him in the shin with surprising force, considering that she was shoeless. She mouthed back, “I’ll aim higher next time.” And then shoved him in the direction of the bathroom.
Ticked, he limped the rest of the way out of the room and swung the door partially closed behind him. Who would have thought Macy Reid had such a mean streak? Rubbing at his arm, he strained to hear the conversation in the other room.
“. . . is so sweet of you,” she was saying.
Kell rolled his eyes. It didn’t escape him that he hadn’t gotten similar treatment when he’d brought her dinner. The observation made him vow to take another swipe at her fries.
“I thought, maybe . . . you know, we could eat and talk. About the case. And . . . other things. If you want.”
If he weren’t so irritated, Kell would have felt a stab of pity. Listening to Travis stammer around was almost painful. The man was seriously out of practice at this thing, if he’d ever had game to begin with.
The warmth in Macy’s tone must be reserved for talking to everyone but him. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your thoughtfulness. But I have hours of work ahead of me on analyzing those written communications. I’m going to be up half the night as it is.”
“Oh, yeah. Me, too.” The disappointment in the man’s voice was evident, even to Kell’s ears. “Got to transcribe today’s notes to send to Agent Whitman. Here.” There was a faint clatter of silverware. “I’ll just put this . . . oh. Looks like you already ate. You should have said.”
“I had something sent up. But I have no doubt that before the night is over I’m going to be hungry again. And when I am, I’ll eat this and be thankful to you all over again.”
Kell rolled his eyes. She was laying it on a little thick, but she was quick on her feet, he’d give her that. “I like a woman who’s not afraid to admit to an appetite,” Travis was saying, “instead of just pushing food around her plate and pretending to eat.”
Seriously, maybe the CBI agent was the one in need of some tutoring. Kell tuned them out as he unbuttoned his shirt and withdrew his arm, using the mirror to inspect the damage Macy had inflicted. He’d never met a woman yet who would think “having an appetite” constituted a compliment. But then he’d never met a woman like Macy before. She was a mystery in many ways. He’d worked with her on a couple other cases, as well as knowing her at headquarters. Try as he might, he couldn’t recall one thing he knew about her personal life. She was remarkably closemouthed. Which left him to draw his own conclusions, most of which infuriated her.
The bathroom door swung open. Quick reflexes had him stepping away before it caught him in the shoulder. Whatever Macy had been about to say went unuttered as she stared at him shrugging back into his shirt.
Her eyes went to the scar over his heart. He wondered if she was remembering how she’d traced her lips and tongue over it that night. Her touch had provided a measure of healing he hadn’t even known he’d been in need of.
Meeting his gaze again, she said, “I don’t even want to know what you were doing in here.” Turning on her heel, she headed back into the bedroom. He trailed in her wake.
“I’m going to bruise,” he informed her. “It’s the Irish curse of fair skin. And when I do, you’ll have to kiss it better.”
“When they serve lemon popsicles in hell,” she retorted quickly.
The familiarity of the phrase distracted him momentarily. Then he snapped his fingers. “Ramsey Clark.”
She stilled. When guilt flickered over her face, he knew he’d nailed it. “You’ve been taking comeback advice from Ramsey. That phrase is totally one of hers.” Ramsey was another of Raiker’s investigators and blessed—or cursed—with the most caustic tongue he’d ever heard on a woman. “You picked a good tutor. Half the staff at headquarters are terrified of her.”
“Ramsey isn’t terrifying. And it’s not Clark anymore. She’s on her honeymoon, remember? She and Dev are in Europe.” Macy crossed the room and sat down in front of the desk holding her laptop and other equipment she’d unloaded.
“I was at the wedding, wasn’t I?” He wasn’t likely to forget the surreal ceremony. Of all the women he knew, Ramsey was the last he’d have expected to dive into marriage. He was happy as hell for her, but that didn’t mean he didn’t wish Stryker luck. Ramsey was a tough nut, but she’d looked all soft and sort of glowing at the ceremony.
Weddings weren’t his thing, but he made an exception for those of his colleagues. And maybe there’d been a cloudy, deeply buried hope, that the event would spark a desire in Macy to reconsider her decision about the two of them.
Instead, she’d spent the entire evening staying as far across the room from him as possible, and he’d gotten on particularly good terms with a bottle of Scotch.
He spied his empty plate on the floor next to the bed. She must have placed it there before answering the door. He picked it up and set it on the bedside table before wandering over to peer over her shoulder. “How’s this linguistic thing work?” When she merely leveled a look at him, he shrugged. “I know what you said to Whitman. But you’ve never said how you do it.”
She blew out a breath then pushed a strand of hair back from her face. His gaze traced the gesture. “It’s sort of like diagramming sentences. Did you ever do that in English class at school?”
“If we did I skipped those days.” He’d actually skipped more days than he’d attended and had graduated a step ahead of the truant officer.
She flipped open the file Whitman had given her and took out a copy of the ransom note. The next page was an e-mail communication from Stephen Mulder to his accountant, Lance Spencer. “I’m going to break every sentence down into its parts. Nouns, adjectives, verbs. Gerunds and participles. Then I’ll look for particular patterns in the way the different parts of speech are used. How many times does that pattern repeat within the document? Once I have the patterns for the statements, and the ransom note, I’ll feed them into the database.” She nodded at the computer. “From that point it just takes a couple minutes for each to determine if we have a match.”
“After you do all the diagramming first.”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds boring.”
She gave a slight smile. “It’s fascinating, at least to me. How people communicate and the hidden messages in their speech is like piecing together a verbal puzzle.”
“So that’s what you did for BII?” He nodded toward the computer. “Threat assessments and comparisons like this?”
Leaning forward to pick up a pen, she gave a slight grimace. “Mostly. I wanted to work as an agent, as well, but BII was more interested in keeping me in the labs. That’s one of the reasons I accepted Adam’s offer to work with him.”
Intrigued, he studied her as she began making marks on the copy of the ransom note. “So you were both on Castillo’s trail. You said th
at once. BII investigates kidnappings across country boundaries, right? I can see how investigators might be called to testify at the trial, but you being there means there was some written communication tying Castillo to the case. How’d that play . . .”
“Burke.” It wasn’t just the snap in her voice that drew his attention. It was her grip on the pen. The knuckles on her fingers had gone white. “If you’re going to stay in here, two words: Shut. Up.”
Clearly, he’d hit a nerve. Hell of it was, he hadn’t even been trying this time. She revealed things from her past so rarely he’d just taken the opportunity to get a few answers to the questions about her that seemed more and more compelling every day. Her reaction put his instincts on red alert.
He watched her for a few more moments. She’d gone back to her work but hadn’t loosened her grip on the pen. And then he did something he did too rarely, especially with this woman.
Kell backed off. God knew he had things in his past he didn’t like to talk about. And before he started to get too sensitive, there was one other thing to focus on.
She hadn’t kicked him out again.
More cheerful, he returned to his spot on her bed, detouring to pick up the plate Travis had brought her. It was going to be a long night. And those two burgers hadn’t quite made up for missing lunch.
It was a little after midnight when he looked up from the pages he was studying to meet Macy’s quizzical gaze. Voices and footsteps could be heard outside her room. If the noise hadn’t alerted him, Kell was convinced the CBI agents would have left him completely out of the action. Rat bastards.
As one, they rose and jammed their feet into shoes and ran to open the door. “Pelton!” Kell called out as the last agent rushed by. “What’s going on?”
“The warrant came through,” the other man called back. “Predawn raid of the residence the ransom note came from.”
Chapter 8
The scene outside 16125 Elman Avenue was dark and still. Not surprising for four A.M.
Kell could make out several other vehicles in the vicinity. CBI didn’t believe in going in undermanned. Which made Whitman’s reluctance to include him all the harder to swallow.
“Remember what Assistant Director Whitman said,” Dan Travis reminded him. “DPD’s Special Response entry team leads the way. We’ll bring up the tail end. You go cowboy on me, and we’re both going to end up with our ass in a sling.”
The CBI agent sounded worried, and he had some cause. The showdown between Kell and Whitman had been short, loud, and moderately profane. The only real reason for the supervisory agent’s capitulation was there was no way the man could have prevented Kell from following in one of Mulder’s vehicles, and the man had recognized that.
He just hadn’t been happy about it.
Straining his eyes, Kell kept watch on the vehicles on the street for any sign of movement. “Like I told Whitman, I have some experience in these situations.” Enough to know when to sit back and follow orders, even when they chafed. “And regardless of what he thinks, so does Macy.”
If Kell had been irritated by Whitman’s attempt to close them out of the raid, Macy had been incensed. But for once he’d agreed with the man’s reasoning. They had plenty of manpower for the raid. Macy was the only one with the knowledge of linguistics. She couldn’t be spared from that task.
Which hadn’t meant she’d been happy about it.
He gave a quick grin, recalling her succinct remarks about the turn of events before they’d gone out the door, her last words sounding after them. He preferred to believe the “blooming wanker” remark she’d muttered had been directed at Whitman, and not at him.
“This is no situation for a woman,” the agent said.
Kell cast a disbelieving look at the other man. He looked as foreign as Kell probably did himself, wearing the tactical headgear and heavy-plated load-bearing vest. “If you’re going to say that to Macy’s face, I’d advise you to keep your gear on. And protect your balls.”
“I’m not being chauvinistic. There are just some circumstances better suited for men.”
“You should share your thoughts with her,” Kell advised blandly. “I know she’d appreciate hearing them.” And he’d enjoy hearing her take the man off at the knees when he did so.
The back of the tactical truck opened then, and his muscles tensed. A swarm of gear-clad men clambered out, and Kell opened the car door.
“Wait,” hissed Travis.
“Game’s on.” He fitted the night vision goggles over his eyes, adrenaline doing a fast sprint up his spine. If the mastermind of Ellie Mulder’s kidnapping was sleeping blissfully inside the small clapboard house the team was rushing toward, they might be only minutes away from discovering the girl’s whereabouts.
She was almost certain he was asleep.
Ellie strained her ears, but she could hear nothing. He’d turned the TV off hours ago. In the sudden silence she’d stilled her movements and feigned sleep before the footsteps headed toward her.
She’d had lots of practice pretending to be asleep.
He hadn’t spent much time checking on her. The footsteps had stopped beside her cot for less than a minute. But just thinking of those blank tan eyes of his staring down at her had made her stomach twist.
Then he’d moved away. She’d heard him heading across the space to his cot, tucked in a corner. There were no walls or doors inside the area. Which meant she was going to have to be very, very quiet.
She was good at that, too.
The cot she was lying on was just a flat piece of canvas secured to the metal frame by a series of springs. But every time he’d left the place to relieve himself or to talk on the phone, Ellie had scooted her stool over to the cot. She’d brought both feet up and slammed them down on the canvas close to a spring halfway up the frame. Although the cot looked new, it hadn’t taken that long for the spring to break away from the fabric.
And the edge of that metal spring was far sharper than that spoon that he’d found and taken away from her would have been.
She’d been maneuvering for hours. Ever since she’d gone to bed. Under the lone blanket she’d worked her bound wrists back and forth over the sharp end of the spring.
Her wrists were slippery with blood. It was taking forever. She had to work by touch alone and had gouged and scraped her bare skin. It was hard to keep the spring in place.
But the tape was shredding, too. And that was enough to have her continuing.
Ellie knew she was going to die in this little room if she didn’t do something. No matter how much she’d prayed, no one had found her at Art Cooper’s house. No one would find her here, wherever here was. It was up to her to get away.
And if she died trying, it couldn’t be as bad as waiting for the man to use that knife on her.
She jumped when her movements resulted in a quick flash of pain. It took a moment to figure out the wire was slicing bare skin. The tape had been torn away.
The realization had her going limp for a moment, her eyelids sliding shut. Her heart began to hammer hard in her chest. Easy to plan how she was going to do it while the tape still held tight. But now it was time to act. And for a few moments, courage deserted her.
Maybe someone would come. An inner voice jeered, but she grasped at the hope. Maybe those men her dad hired—the ones she wasn’t supposed to know about—would figure this out and follow their trail up here. She wouldn’t have to go out in the cold and dark and try to find her way to safety.
And maybe—probably—her kidnapper would use that knife on her before anyone came to the rescue. Or even the gun she’d seen under his shirt, tucked into the waistband of his pants.
To summon her flagging courage, she imagined his eyes again, staring at her. Lifeless and considering. And knew she had no choice.
Rolling from the bed as quietly as possible, she stood, rubbing the circulation back into her wrists. The day the man had gotten a phone call, she’d looked out the back window. So she knew
there were no houses nearby. Maybe not even for miles. They were somewhere high. If not exactly in the Rockies, at least in the foothills. But they were surrounded by evergreens. And she knew the only chance she had was if she could hide herself among them as she worked her way toward a road. Any road.
She’d had to have some way to pass the time to avoid going crazy since he’d bought her here. So she’d plotted how she’d get away. Tried to recall everything her dad had taught her on their winter camping trips. She’d hated them at the time. Hated the cold and the snow. But now she tried to remember every detail of them. She tiptoed noiselessly toward the door.
The space wasn’t totally dark. There was a faint glimmer coming through the weird windows in the wall. All he’d have to do is open his eyes at that moment to see her highlighted in the light cast by the woodstove as she crossed in front of it.
Holding her breath, she moved as fast as she dared. When she reached the front of the stove, she couldn’t help glancing toward his cot. She could see the shadowy shape of it. The outline of his body lying there.
Ellie moved more quickly. She was good at moving quietly. Last year, after Dad had bought Lucky for her, she’d started sneaking out to the stables at night when she couldn’t sleep. Thinking of her horse now brought a quick hitch to her chest. Sometimes when she couldn’t breathe anymore, when everything seemed too close and heavy, just putting her arms around her horse’s neck made it all melt away.
Her dad had found out, of course. The men who watched the cameras, the ones he thought she didn’t know about, would have told him. He’d sat her down and explained why she couldn’t sneak out alone anymore. He hadn’t been mad. He’d even said she could wake him up anytime and he’d go to the stables with her.
She hadn’t, of course. What would have been the point? So she had stopped sneaking out at night. But it had been good practice for her escape tonight.
When she reached the front door, she stopped again to listen. It was silent except for the faint crackle of logs in the stove. She picked up the heavy winter coat he’d put on when he’d gone outside to talk on the phone, discovered snow pants beneath it. Ellie hesitated. She had no outdoor clothes to put on. There was only that heavy insulated bag thing wadded up next to the coat that he must have brought her here in. Wrinkling her nose with distaste, she pulled his snow pants on. They were much too big, as were the boots she shoved her feet into. She hesitated when she saw the snowshoes. On the winter camping trips she’d tried snowshoeing with her mom and dad, but she’d never been able to get the hang of the stupid things. These would be worse because they were so big.
