Hearts Under Siege

by Natalie J. Damschroder

  A siren wailed. Brady shook off his incredulity. This wasn’t over. He strode to Ellison, since Ramona was out cold, and fisted his hand in the guy’s shirt. “Where is she?”

  Ellison’s gaze never wavered, but his mouth twisted with smugness. Rage had Brady hauling back, oblivious to the surging pain in his shoulder, but his father intervened.

  “Hey! Hold on. Where’s who?” Rick looked grim. “Jessica—”

  “No.” Brady took a step back. His chest heaved, frustration tearing at him. He wanted to hurt Ellison, make him give up Shae’s location. “Not Jessica. Shae. Chris’s daughter.” The words came out hard and intense, but only when he heard them did Brady realize what he was doing. He shifted to look at his father, whose face had drained of all color.

  “Chris’s…what?”

  “What did you say?” His mother came around from behind Brady and stared at him.

  Crap. He shoved his right hand through his hair. This was the opposite of how he had wanted this to come out. There wasn’t time to explain, and possibly even less time to get to his niece. Dawn was moments away. But words twisted and jumbled in his brain, pounded down by the throbbing pain in his shoulder.

  Then Molly stepped forward and put her hand on his arm. A balm, even if it barely took the edge off.

  “At the funeral,” she explained quickly to his parents, “we found a young girl trying to pay her respects. She was the spitting image of Christopher. Ramona was there, and she must have seen the resemblance, too. She abducted her and sent Dix a threatening video. They implied they’d trade her for the information, but since all the players seem to be here—”

  Behind them, Ramona laughed. Brady and the others turned to watch her roll gracelessly onto her back and sit up. Her laughter didn’t match the mingled fury and fear in her eyes.

  “Let me go,” she said, “and I’ll tell you where the girl is. Keep me, and she dies within the hour.”

  “How?” Brady demanded, advancing on her. “Where is she?”

  Ramona gave him a disdainful look. “I said, let me go.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  Brady’s parents hadn’t said anything yet, out of shock, he figured, but as the police approached the garage and called out, his father took charge again and opened up the main door to let them in. Uniforms and plainclothes swarmed the building, weapons ready, and it took a few minutes—too many minutes—to sort out who was whom. Every beat of Brady’s heart measured the time passing. Maybe the time Shae had left. Aldus had given them just an hour.

  Rick handed over the materials to the detective in charge, who admitted it was outside his jurisdiction and would have to go to the feds. But it was in the right hands, so Chris should be safe, even if Ellison and Aldus had other people working for them, still out there.

  Brady didn’t bother stopping the officers leading Aldus away. He wouldn’t get anything from Aldus now, not when she didn’t think she had anything left to lose. But they had no other leads, and no time.

  When Brady saw Molly slip back into the garage, he skirted a cluster of cops to get to her. “Where did you go?”

  She pulled him further away, toward a shadowy corner. “I checked the GPS on Ramona’s car. I was hoping she didn’t know how to get to the house and keyed in the address from wherever she’s holding Shae.”

  Hope flared. “And?”

  “I don’t know if that’s where she was, but she did use it. I got an address.” She waved a piece of paper. “Can we sneak out of here?”

  Brady glanced over his shoulder. He didn’t want to sneak away without backup, with both of them injured. But his parents and Dix were all engaged with the cops right now, and the heartbeats measuring seconds had become thuds. Nearly half an hour had passed already since Aldus had given Shae an hour. Molly was right. “Okay. Let’s go. I’ll call my father from the road, and he can send backup just in case.”

  They hurried out to the street.

  “What are we going to drive?” Molly asked, surveying the crowded neighborhood. Her car was still at the airport, the rental getting ticketed in DC. Dix’s, of course, they’d ditched. Ramona’s was the easiest to get to, but they had no key.

  “I’ll get my keys. Car’s down the block. I don’t think it’s locked.” Brady hurried inside the house, trying to look purposeful but not in such a hurry that he drew attention from the cops dotting the yard. When he came back out the front door, Ramona was being led to a squad car by one of the detectives. She sneered at him, defiant even as she was lowered into the vehicle.

  He ignored the urge to go plow his fist in her face and instead walked to his car, where Molly was already in the driver’s seat plugging the address into his GPS.

  “It’s only a few miles,” she told him when he got in the car. “We’ll make it.”

  Assuming they were going to the right place. He handed her the keys and braced himself for whatever they were about to find.

  …

  The address turned out to be in a residential neighborhood, a small Cape Cod–style house. Molly was glad it wasn’t a warehouse or something else huge, with too much area to search. But as innocent as the house looked, she had a feeling this wasn’t going to be easy.

  “What if it’s wired?” she asked as they got out of the car.

  “I’m sure they’ve got something set up.” Brady scanned the sidewalk but saw no evidence of a trap. “They wouldn’t have risked harming a stray pet or random local. If they did anything, it will be to the house.”

  They made their way carefully to the top of the front stoop. “Is the front door too obvious?” Molly asked. “We should check out all the entrances, right? Look in windows?” She could see from where she stood that the front windows were covered with solid curtains.

  “No time.” Brady’s hand went to his hip, as if reaching for a weapon. “We’re down to ten minutes.”

  “We can’t just open the door.”

  He frowned, examining the doorjamb and latch. “She can’t have booby-trapped everything. She had to be able to get back in.”

  “So there’s probably a timer?” Molly guessed. Man, she wished she’d had more field training.

  “It could be anything. We probably don’t have to worry about explosives. That would call attention. She’d want to handle everything quietly.” He slowly pushed down on the latch and nudged the door. It moved half an inch.

  “Not locked,” he said. He moved it a tiny bit more and called through the crack. “Shae? Are you in there? We’re here to help you.”

  Sobs broke the waiting silence. “Who are you?” The voice was young, female. Molly let out the breath she’d been holding. The girl was still alive.

  “I’m Brady Fitzpatrick. I’m your—I’m Chris’s brother—we met at the funeral.”

  The sobs grew louder, harsher. Broken words came through, but Molly couldn’t understand them.

  “Sweetie, we need to know what’s going to happen when we open this door,” she said.

  “Nothing.” Shae gasped back her tears. “That’s not the problem.”

  “You’re sure?” Brady said. “The door’s not rigged to do anything?”

  “No. It’s just me.”

  Molly’s blood ran cold. Brady’s face hardened with fury. His head moved slightly in a three-count, and then he burst through the door, rolling right as he did. Molly lost sight of him and squeezed her eyes shut, her shoulders hunching, but nothing happened.

  “It’s clear,” Brady called to her, but he didn’t sound relaxed.

  She slowly crossed the threshold. Shae sat in a comfortable-looking upholstered chair in the center of the room. Molly frowned at the oddity. The girl wasn’t even tied to the chair. But she sat extremely still, her eyes locked on something above her.

  “Don’t move,” Brady ordered. Like either of them was going to.

  Molly followed Shae’s sight line and bit back a curse. Three wicked-looking knives hung above the front door, tied to fishing line looped through eye hoo
ks in the wall and ceiling and connected somehow to Shae. It was clear that if the girl moved too much, it would release the knives, which would come swinging down at her. Molly thought a skilled adult could guess at their trajectories and duck or dive wide, but no way an inexperienced teenager could figure it out or move fast enough. Or have the courage to try.

  “Can we disconnect them?” Molly asked.

  Brady moved closer and squinted, trying to see the nearly invisible fishing line holding them in place. He shook his head. “They’re barely held up here. If we touch the line, they’ll release.”

  “How are they connected to you, honey?” Molly asked Shae. The girl had to fight herself to take her eyes off the knives and look at Molly, and only lasted a second before her eyes whipped back to the knives.

  “I don’t know. They gave me a shot and I went to sleep, and when I woke up I was here, and they told me if I moved…” She couldn’t finish the sentence.

  “Did they do anything to the rest of the house?” Molly tried to keep Shae talking, calm her a little, and distract her from Brady, who was now prowling around, trying to follow the lines. “Were there areas they avoided, or maybe they used extra caution in some places?”

  “I don’t think so,” Shae said. “They moved around normally, like there was nothing to worry about.”

  “What else did they tell you?”

  “That if they weren’t back in an hour, I’d—” She choked, more sobs bursting from her.

  “Is there a timer?” Molly asked Brady. She didn’t understand the whole hour thing.

  “I’m looking.”

  “What did the people look like? Did they use any names?” Molly kept asking questions, but her mind raced. Why would they rig the knives to drop at a certain time? It was gruesome and cruel, and seemed overly melodramatic compared to everything else they’d done. Even with the desperation factor…

  “It was two people,” Shae said. “A woman and a man. The man was younger, and called the woman Mona, I think. She called him Junior.”

  “There’s no timer.” Brady stood from where he’d been examining the base of the chair. “The time thing seems totally arbitrary. But we’re not getting her off that chair without those knives dropping.” He rested his hand on Shae’s shoulder when she cried harder. “It’s okay. I have a plan.”

  He talked them through the plan and made them both recite it back to him. He was outwardly calm and direct, but Molly could see the anxiety underneath.

  God, she loved him so much.

  “Okay, ready?”

  She took a deep breath. Brady stood next to her with an end table. She eased around behind Shae’s chair, being careful not to touch any of the lines coming down to it. She crouched and dug her fingers behind the upper cushion, getting as much of a grip as she could on the back of the chair. “Ready.”

  “Okay.” There was a scrape against the floor as Brady picked up the table, grunting with the effort of using his damaged arm. He counted to three, then yelled “Now!”

  Molly yanked on the chair, pushing her feet hard at its base to make sure it tipped backward instead of sliding. Shae screamed. There was a faint twang, more felt than heard. The chair fell back on Molly and she rolled, shoving hard to flip it over onto the girl. Her brain belatedly registered two thunks and a clatter. Breathing hard, she pushed herself up.

  Brady was crouched behind the upturned table. How did he fit his whole big body behind there? The points of two of the knives were visible from the underside of the table. Molly scanned until she spotted the third, on the floor next to the upholstered chair. She scrambled to lift the chair off Shae. Brady helped, his good arm as strong as both of hers.

  Shae lay curled tight into herself, not crying, not moving. There was no sign of blood.

  “Honey.” Molly crouched and touched the girl’s shoulder. “We’ve got you. Everything’s okay now.”

  Shae exploded up into her arms, hugging the breath out of her, whispering, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Molly hugged her back and stroked her hair. Her eyes met Brady’s. His mouth was tight around the edges, meaning his shoulder hurt again, but his gaze was soft and satisfied. Molly had to suppress a shiver at the message he sent her: It’s over, and now we can focus on us.

  Suddenly, she felt like the danger was just beginning.

  …

  Brady drove back to his parents’ with Molly holding Shae in the back seat. She’d asked the girl about calling her mother, but she’d refused to give them any information, even when Molly reminded her the woman had to be frantic with worry. She and Brady silently agreed to wait until they got back to the house and let the police take care of it.

  Two detectives were still there when they got home. Brady wanted nothing more than to find a pain pill and a horizontal surface, but by the looks on the guys’ faces, that wasn’t going to happen. They separated him and Molly as soon as they walked in the door. Brady’s mother took over Shae, leading her to the kitchen for food and comfort and, Brady was sure, gentle interrogation.

  “Where’s Jessica?” he asked his father before following the cop to the dining room.

  “She’s resting. The commotion woke her, but she didn’t see anything until it was over, and they let her go back to her bedroom.”

  Brady nodded and limped into the dining room. Funny how a shoulder injury could affect how you walked. His entire body ached now, radiating from the bullet wound. He didn’t wait for permission to sit.

  “There’s a lot I’m not going to be able to answer,” he warned the detective. A sigh of relief escaped him as the table took the weight of his injured arm. “I don’t know everything that’s been going on.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” The detective looked down at his notes. “I’ve been given three different names. One DC Metro cop, two feds. They’ll take over the case, I’m sure. So don’t expect this to be the last set of questions.”

  Brady’s eyes burned. “Hit me.”

  The detective actually went easy on him, surprising since he’d skipped out on the scene. He made Brady tell him about the events leading to today’s incident, and asked more questions about Shae than anything else.

  Brady described what had happened, how they knew she was abducted and how to find her, but added, “I don’t know anything else. I believe she’s my niece, but I don’t even know her last name. I’m not sure my brother knows about her. The rest of us didn’t.”

  Ten minutes later, the detective let Brady go and went to the kitchen to talk to Shae and convince her to let him call her mother. Brady stayed behind to call the hospital to check on Christopher. He wasn’t sure if his parents had gotten the implication of him saying Aldus tried to kill Chris—twice. But he was going to have to tell them now and didn’t want to have to say, “I don’t know” about his condition.

  After being transferred three times, he got the nurses’ station nearest where they’d moved his brother. The woman asked him half a dozen questions to confirm his identity and her freedom to give him information.

  “Mr. Fitzpatrick is stable and awake and…um…resting comfortably.”

  Yeah, right. “He’s making threats, huh?” Brady would be, in Chris’s situation. He took the woman’s silence for confirmation. “Can I talk to him?”

  “I’ll transfer you to his room.”

  There were a few clicks, then a ring, then a barked, “Hello.”

  “It’s me,” Brady said.

  “What the hell is going on? No one will tell me anything, no one answers their frigging phone, and the cops just stare at the wall. Is everyone okay?”

  “Yeah, everyone’s fine. But tell me how you are. Mom will want to know that first thing.”

  That calmed Chris. “I’m okay. Good pain meds, lots of adrenaline. Doc said I’m out of the woods, but I’ll be here for a few more days, at least. Did you tell them yet?”

  “No. But I’m about to.” Brady gave him the rundown of events since the shooting at the drop site. He kep
t his voice level when he talked about Shae, as if they’d known about her all along.

  But Chris exploded into curses. “How the fuck did she get to Connecticut? She shouldn’t have even known I was dead! Where’s her mother?”

  Brady chuckled wryly. “You’re not the only one with questions, bro.”

  Chris went silent for a moment. “Yeah. I guess I have some explaining to do, huh?”

  “Does Jessica know about Shae?”

  “Hell, yeah. She always has. It’s been…complicated.”

  Brady couldn’t believe he’d told Jessica and not the rest of them. “You’d better start explaining,” he ground out.

  Chris sighed. “All right. Basic rundown. I dated Shae’s mother briefly in college. She was graduating and had already entered the Peace Corps. I had been recruited by SIEGE. We both thought it was over, until she discovered she was pregnant. She’d just told me when something happened where she was serving. She went into witness protection and I didn’t hear anything else for six years.”

  “Jesus, Chris.” Brady noticed Chris didn’t mention Shae’s mother’s name. It was possible Brady knew her, since they’d all been at school together.

  “I cultivated contacts at WITSEC and was able to keep tabs from afar, until the threat was neutralized. She decided not to come out of the program, but since I was an operator, she let me make contact.” His voice grew raspy, and he cleared his throat. “I missed out on a lot. I only get to see her once or twice a year. Her mother is still afraid and refuses to let me tell anyone. I thought it would be easier if Mom and Dad didn’t even know she existed.”

  Brady couldn’t believe how much his brother had kept hidden. What a strain it must have been. “Well, it’s out now. I don’t think those conditions are going to hold. Mom’s filling Shae with food and love as we speak.”

  “I don’t care. I just—she’s okay?” His anger must have been spent, and now the fear was belatedly seeping through.

  “I think so. Physically. She won’t let us call her mother, but a detective is trying to convince her.”

  “I want to talk to my daughter.”