Broken

by Rebecca Zanetti

  “Hi, Dana. It’s Dr. Georgetown.”

  Oh. She’d forgotten all about the doctor. “Hi. Is everything okay with my blood?” Had there been something else in the drug cocktail? She’d kept her worry under wraps, but it’d be nice to have confirmation that some bizarre disease or germ wasn’t crawling through her system.

  “I just wanted to let you know that everything is normal and I didn’t find any trace of those drugs or anything odd in your blood. Well, Donald didn’t find anything. He did the actual tests.” The doctor sneezed several times.

  “Bless you,” Dana said.

  “Thanks.” The sound of papers shuffling came over the line. “I’ll need to test Wolfe’s blood, just to make sure, when he’s available. Have him call me.”

  Dana took a sip of her water. “I will. Hopefully soon.”

  The doctor cleared his throat. “There is one more thing. I’d rather tell you this in person, but Donald and I are going on holiday tomorrow, so over the phone will have to do.”

  Dana stopped breathing.

  “Dana? We found a significant amount of hCG in your blood.”

  Dana’s mouth opened, but no sound came out. She tried again, clearing her throat. “I, ah, you, um, is it possible to have hCG and not be pregnant?”

  “Probably not, hon.” He was quiet, letting her digest the news. “We can talk about options, if you like.”

  “No. Thanks.” Her body went numb, and she stared at Roscoe, who’d turned from his food to watch her. “I appreciate your calling.” She didn’t hear much of what else the doctor said before she hung up. Something about prenatal vitamins and rest.

  She’d had a feeling. Oh, she’d shoved it down with logic and statistics and distractions, but deep down, she’d had an odd feeling about that night with Wolfe that she couldn’t explain.

  Roscoe, sensing her emotions, lumbered across the kitchen and set his jaw on her knee.

  Thoughts and feelings bombarded her. A baby. Wolfe’s baby. They’d just started dating and a psychotic killer was hunting them. They’d been drugged and not in their right minds when having unprotected sex. A little girl with Wolfe’s startling bourbon-colored eyes and her gift for writing. Or a little boy with Wolfe’s face and her eyes.

  Wolfe had mentioned maybe dating her when this was all over. He’d never talked about a future. It was way early in the pregnancy, and most things went wrong in the first trimester. She hadn’t even missed a period yet. Most folks didn’t announce until after three months just in case something went wrong. Would Wolfe want a baby? She wasn’t ready, but she was pregnant, so she’d have to get ready.

  It was impossible to grab on to just one thought.

  Except that Wolfe was somewhere in a remote part of a different country surrounded by killers with guns while trying to bomb a building full of heroin. There with only one man for backup, an unclear plan for extraction, and an uncertainty about even the correct location of the drugs.

  Plus, Wolfe was still wounded from the bomb explosion the other night. He might not be as quick as usual or even as strong. Sure, he was incredibly tough, but his ribs were bruised and he’d limped when he’d thought she wasn’t watching him. At this very moment, he might be in extreme danger. He’d promised to come home, but sometimes things were out of one’s hands, even Wolfe’s. He could be getting shot at right now. Or maybe he was still parachuting from a high altitude, where so many things could go wrong.

  She was pregnant and he didn’t know it.

  “Oh, Roscoe,” she murmured. “This is huge.”

  Chapter Forty

  Wolfe fired once, the suppressor on his weapon making barely a small pop. The guy went down fast and quiet.

  Jethro nodded, dropped his pack, and drew out several devices. He moved to the back of the room, placing bombs as he went, starting the timers for three minutes. Wolfe set one near the doorway, gave Jethro a signal, and dodged back into the corridor.

  The timing was good for this op; there were few people inside the facility. The second it exploded, he and Jet would have to run. It was impossible to see how many insurgents were crawling the hills, but they’d deal with that next. He hustled down to the end of the corridor, setting a device and engaging the timer.

  Jet met him and they moved back the way they’d come, guns first.

  Wolfe reached the occupied lab and stood in the doorway while Jethro covered the corridor. He briefly lifted his mask so everyone could hear him clearly. “You have four minutes to vacate this building before it explodes.”

  Several of the techs, dressed in white with masks covering their faces, looked up from their equipment.

  Wolfe looked for threats, but saw no guards. Maybe they stayed mainly outside. He tried again. “Hay explosives en esta instalación que detonarán en menos de cuatro minutos. Sal de aquí y corre tan lejos como puedas. Ahora!” he yelled.

  A woman to the far left gasped, and the group scrambled for the door.

  “There you go,” Jethro said through his own mask.

  Wolfe nodded, turned, and started to run to get out before the techs. He emerged first into the night. Bullets zinged by his head, and he ducked and rolled, coming up firing toward the bursts.

  Jethro did the same, and the gunfire stopped.

  Wolfe scrambled up and started running away from the underground lab.

  The sounds of people screaming orders and scrambling away filled the night, along with more gunfire. Wolfe ran in a zigzag pattern, heading between scraggly trees and climbing the next hill.

  Gunfire erupted, and he turned to return fire, adrenaline bursting through him.

  Jethro grunted in pain and went down.

  Wolfe skidded to a stop and ducked low, reaching his friend. “How bad?” His voice was muffled through the mask.

  “Bad.” Jethro clutched his bleeding right thigh.

  Shit. Wolfe grabbed Jethro by the shoulders and yanked him around a tree, propping him up. Then he dropped his pack, grasping the knife from his sheath and slicing up Jet’s pants leg, cutting the material away.

  He peered down to look via moonlight, not wanting to give away their position.

  The scent of blood and dirt filled his nostrils.

  Jethro looked down at his leg, his mask safely in place. “Bugger.”

  “Looks like ankle, calf, above knee, and thigh,” Wolfe said, calculating the blood loss. It was a burst of bullets. There was nothing like an AK-47 to mess up a body—old school.

  He dug in his pack and drew out QuikClot to wrap around each of the wounds. Jethro bit his lip but didn’t make a sound, his body tense with pain.

  A man came around the nearest tree, caught sight of them, and quickly lifted his weapon.

  Wolfe partially turned and threw the knife, penetrating the guy’s neck. The man dropped his gun, grabbed the knife handle, and fell forward to land on his face, his legs kicking out.

  Jethro grunted, his face looking pale, even in the darkness.

  Wolfe padded each wound and tied them tight, wrapping material from his first aid pack around each one.

  Jethro shook his head. “I can’t run, mate.”

  “I’m aware.” Wolfe stood and replaced his pack. Shouting came from the hill to the right, and three armed men scaled the top, running toward them.

  Wolfe leaped to the nearest tree, ducking and dodging for a better angle. “Go flat.”

  Jethro instantly complied, sliding down, his gun out and ready.

  Wolfe levered himself up, aimed, and squeezed the trigger three times. The men fell fast, one of them getting off a shot that spit up dust next to Wolfe.

  Gunfire erupted from the opposite direction, throwing twigs and rocks all around him.

  Shit. Jethro was exposed, even flat on the ground.

  Wolfe ducked his head and launched into motion, weaving to avoid the rain of bullets. He reached Jethro, clamped his hands around Jet’s good ankle, dropped his shoulder to the ground, rolled and twisted, hitting his knees and coming up to his
feet with Jethro over his shoulder, one arm manacled around Jet’s calf and the other on his forearm.

  The man’s muscled weight bore down on Wolfe and he grunted, running for the distant trees and the one hill that didn’t hold anybody shooting at them.

  Yet.

  A soldier ran toward them from the side, shooting erratically. Jethro lifted himself up from his position on Wolfe’s shoulders, and fired rapidly, dropping the guy.

  Wolfe grunted and held on, his grip sliding to Jethro’s thigh as the Brit twisted and fired three more shots in the same direction.

  Grunts and cries of pain echoed back.

  Wolfe’s ribs cracked together and projected pain throughout his body. He sucked it in, let pain take him, and shoved sensation away, ignoring the agony. He kept a tight hold on Jethro, running up another hill, along a ravine and then over yet another hill, through a series of trees, and over rocks that kept dropping beneath his feet to another ravine below.

  Jethro held tight, not making a sound.

  Impressive.

  Wolfe kept running, his boots barely finding purchase. He glanced at his compass and switched directions a couple of times because of the terrain. Blood slid over his arm, and he glanced down to see what he thought was Jethro’s good arm bleeding. “You shot in the arm, too?” Wolfe growled.

  “No. Just a scratch,” Jethro whispered back, his voice low with pain.

  Pain was good. It meant that Jet still had feeling in the limb, which boded well. If they got out of here. The moon shone down, lighting Wolfe’s way; the stars were brilliant above them. He took an angled approach to descending the next hill, running along a gully and frightening a couple of iguanas into the rocks.

  An explosion sounded behind them, and Wolfe ducked, riding out the waves. Fire billowed, along with smoke, into the sky, lighting the entire area.

  Screams and more gunfire started pattering in every direction but not directly at them. What was everyone shooting at? Particles started falling, and he pressed his mask closer to protect his lungs from what might be pure heroin.

  He saw an opening and took a barely there trail between two rocks up yet another hill, digging his feet in to keep moving. This one was more of a mountain, but he kept climbing, finally reaching the top with his breath panting out painfully. He looked down at a small field where a camouflage-painted helicopter waited quietly.

  Movement sounded behind him.

  Not good. He started to run again, this time letting gravity take control as bullets pinged the rocks around them.

  * * *

  The entire crew showed up too early for work the next morning. Angus Force tapped his fingers against his desk, his concentration splintered. The Jack Daniels in his bottom drawer beckoned to him. A soft knock on the door had him looking gratefully up. “Come in.” He lost his eagerness when Nari clip-clopped her way inside and shut the door. Today the shrink had dressed in a black pencil skirt with a soft purple blouse that made her skin almost translucent. Her black hair hung naturally around her slim shoulders, and concern glowed in her midnight dark eyes. “I don’t want to talk, Nari.”

  She lifted a perfectly painted pink nail. “I’m not here to talk you into therapy.”

  He gestured toward one of the two rickety chairs on the other side of his dented desk. “Have a seat.” He might as well make use of her since she was there. “How is the team doing?”

  “Not well.” She crossed her legs, and he fought a groan at the graceful movement. “Malcolm is staring at his phone, Brigid is yelling at her computers, Raider is silent in case room two, Dana looks like she was hit by a bus, and Roscoe keeps trying to filch whipped cream from everyone.”

  Sounded like a normal day to him. “I assume Pippa is at home working?” The woman did some sort of online accounting and seemed to keep busy.

  “Yeah, with Kat.” Nari’s small nostrils flared as she breathed deep and slowly let the air out. “Shouldn’t we have heard something from Wolfe and Jethro by now?”

  Yes. Angus schooled his face to show no emotion. “No, maybe not. Keep in mind that anything might’ve altered their plan.”

  “Like getting shot?” Nari asked.

  “Don’t borrow trouble.” That was his job. There was an edge in his voice that crept in any time he talked with the shrink. She worked for HDD and not him. “I’m sure you’ve been in contact with our HDD handlers, and I know they want to interview us. What have you told them?”

  She flushed. “I’ve been avoiding their calls, too. We need to pull the entire team together and come up with a reason you two were at Frank Spanek’s apartment right when it blew up.”

  Wait a second. She’d been avoiding them, too? He never could judge her allegiances easily, but now wasn’t the time to try to figure her out. He reached for the plain coffee he’d bought on the way in to work, not having to hide it since Wolfe was out of the office. “We received an anonymous tip that Frank Spanek was trafficking heroin, which, incidentally, was actually true.”

  Nari bounced her shiny black high heel on the leg that was crossed. “How did we receive this tip?”

  Good question. Phone records could be tracked. “Letter sent here. Wolfe took it to the apartment.”

  Her pink lips pursed. “Ah. So it was blown up in the explosion?”

  “Exactly.” It didn’t matter if the HDD handlers believed the Deep Ops team had been out of line; it mattered that they couldn’t prove it. That bobbing foot and slender ankle were going to drive him crazy.

  “All right. I don’t suppose we took a copy of the letter, as protocol would more than likely dictate?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “Oops. Guess we missed that one.” Why the hell hadn’t Wolfe or Jethro called in? He didn’t have a way to reach them through official channels, and he didn’t want to get them in trouble by trying. But if they didn’t make contact by that night, he would have to do something.

  A sharp rap echoed on the door and Brigid yanked it open, her red hair wild around her face. “Satellite imagery confirms an explosion in the hills outside of Culiacán last night. It took me all day to hack into the—”

  Angus held up a hand. “Don’t want to know and really don’t want the shrink to know.”

  Both women shot him a look that made his head ache.

  Angus ignored their irritation. “Did you see anything else?”

  Brigid shook her head. “The satellite I accessed recorded the explosion because it was so bright in the night sky, but I couldn’t get much more detail than that. There is some chatter across governmental lines, but so far, nobody is claiming responsibility.”

  Somebody would. Didn’t matter who.

  Brigid hesitated in the doorway. “Shouldn’t we have heard something directly by now?”

  “Not necessarily,” Angus said. The team had to remain calm and focused, so he hid his own concern. “If they didn’t get out by daylight, they probably went underground until they could execute their exit strategy.” He didn’t like this, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do right now. Except keep Dana Mulberry safe until Wolfe returned. “Check on Dana, would you? She looked a little pale this morning.” The woman was probably terrified for Wolfe. It didn’t take a profiler to see that something was going on between those two.

  Brigid nodded and tossed the mail his way. “Just came in.” Then she turned to head toward the hub of desks.

  Nari wetted her lips. “Are you adding new members to the team? If so, we need to do it officially.”

  That prim and proper voice kept Angus up at night, so he glowered. “No. Serena, Millicent, and Jethro are acting as consultants to the team. We don’t need to deal with the red tape of HDD personnel policies.”

  Nari’s eyebrows rose. “They might want to get paid at some point.”

  “I can pay them as consultants,” Angus said, taking another shot of his coffee. Maybe he should put a little sugar in it. Huh. Wolfe was ruining him. “Your job is to shrink heads and report back to HDD that we’re on the
straight and narrow. Worrying about consultants is outside your purview.”

  She stood, all grace and class. “Could you go one day without being a total butthead?”

  He nearly choked on his coffee but quickly regained his composure. “No.”

  She rolled her eyes and exited the office.

  Grunting, he ripped open the mail, tossing the junk into the trash. He lifted the last one, a cream-colored envelope, and sliced it open. A handwritten note dropped out.

  The world went silent. Electricity jolted from his head through his extremities in a dangerous rush of sparking heat.

  His hand shook as he smoothed the paper to read the two words on the paper. Miss Me?

  The handwriting, he knew well.

  Sound rushed back in as fast as it had disappeared. Lassiter was finally making a move. Force had known that the bastard was still alive. Evil had its own presence. Okay. He’d start tracking, really hunting, the serial killer right away.

  Then he turned his attention back to his too silent burner phone.

  Where the hell were his men?

  Chapter Forty-One

  After a full day of working and getting nothing done, Dana smoothed her hands down her jeans, sitting at Wolfe’s desk in the bullpen of the HDD offices, with Roscoe munching on the side of her tennis shoe. She looked down. “It’s like you’re addicted.” Or maybe she’d spilled whipped cream from her latte on her shoe. Yeah, that was probably more likely.

  The office was too quiet. The place seemed empty without Wolfe. He didn’t talk much, but he seemed to fill a room with his presence.

  Malcolm worked quietly next to her, glancing at his phone every once in a while.

  She wanted to reassure him that Wolfe was fine and would call in soon, but considering it was nearly dinnertime, and they hadn’t received any notice, the words kept choking in her throat.

  The elevator protested, thunked, ground gears, and then opened.

  “Ah, shit,” Mal said, leaning back in his chair.

  At the sound, Angus and Raider emerged from case room two, their expressions identically irritated. Angus had been off all day, but so had everyone else.