by Em Petrova
No matter what happened with Senator Arthur, the Ranger Ops would remain the same. What he wasn’t so sure of was… would Edie?
She was affected by that man’s choices in life, and it couldn’t feel good to be tossed out by her own father, reminded of it again after all these years of no contact.
On the top shelf of his locker, Lennon’s phone buzzed as a call came in. He snatched the cell and brought it to his ear, hoping it was Edie.
Penn’s voice reached him. “Dude, your l’il girl needs another spankin’.”
Lennon’s heart jerked. “What now?”
“She’s visiting the senator.”
“Jesus Christ!” He shoved his fingers through his hair. Up and down the lockers, all eyes were on him. “Can you stop her? It’s not as if she doesn’t know you’re following her.”
“I tried to talk sense into her, but she threw me a look that would shrivel up a man’s balls and make it so he can’t father children. Then she pushed by me and walked right into his office.”
“Where are you right now?”
“Outside waiting. They won’t let me in. Guess I look threatening or some shit,” Penn drawled.
“Fuck—we need her outta there, but my hands are tied. You know I’m on standby, right?”
“No, I didn’t. You do what you gotta. I’ll take care of her.”
“Goddammit. I need to be there. What do you think she’s doing?” Even as he asked it, he already knew—Edie was confronting the senator.
And by going there, she was visible.
To everyone who could hurt her.
“Sully,” he called out, holding the phone away from his ear.
Their leader swung his gaze toward him.
“What the fuck’s happening here? Are we goin’ in or what?”
“Haven’t heard anything in the last five minutes. Let me hit up the colonel again.”
Lennon brought the phone back to his ear. “Penn, get her out of there.”
“Copy.”
The line went dead, and Lennon slammed a fist into the locker. The pain traveled up his arm as the metal vibrated from the blow.
Sully walked over. “What’s going on?” he asked, low.
“Goddammit, my hands are tied.” Lennon twisted away, and Sully hooked an arm around his neck, holding him.
“They’re never tied. There’s always a way. Tell me what’s happening.”
“Edie’s in with the senator. Anything could go down. The cops are worthless in this. It’s gotta be us, Sully.”
Their gazes met. Suddenly, Sully grabbed his phone and brought it to his ear.
“Colonel Downs, something just came up. We need to know if we’re free to take care of it.” As he spoke the words, he stared at Lennon.
He gave Lennon a small nod and thanked the Colonel.
“Time to roll out, boys. We’re paying a visit to the senator.” Lennon swung toward the door.
I’m coming, Edie. God, don’t do anything rash.
* * * * *
“Senator Arthur has cancelled his meeting and agreed to meet you.” The receptionist stood before Edie with a small smile in place. Did the woman know who she was? Did Edie give a damn?
Straightening her shoulders, she followed the woman into a spacious office. Edie threw a look around, but the senator wasn’t here yet.
“He’ll be right in. He told me to ask you to wait.” She smiled at Edie, but her gaze traveled over her features and upward to encompass her hair.
Yeah, she was recognizable, the resemblance uncanny if you put them side by side or knew the senator’s face well enough, which this woman would.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. Her heart thumped harder, faster, louder. The receptionist closed the door, and Edie walked up to the chairs in front of the desk. Rather than take a seat, she circled the heavy wooden desk and stared at the personal items on it.
Expensive items. No Chinese junk here. It was all real leather or heavy brass. Her gaze landed on a silver frame containing a photo of the senator and his family.
A lump wedged in her throat, and she had to swallow hard around it. Looking at the faces of his kids—her own half-siblings—was surreal. This was the closest she’d ever come to them.
Both bearing the brown hair of their mother as well as her face shape and the color of her eyes, they were far from the senator.
A footstep made her jerk. She glanced up to fix her gaze onto the senator.
Her father.
For the second time seeing him, she felt pretty collected even if tongue-tied.
She set the frame back in its place and moved around the desk. “Senator.”
He closed his eyes briefly and opened them again. This time his eyes were shining with emotion.
“I’m so glad to see you in one piece, Eden—Edie. But why did you take a risk in coming here?”
He wore a business suit as usual, and she felt very underdressed in her jeans and top, the classiest items she had with her at Lennon’s house.
“I had to see you.”
He seemed to be restraining himself from speaking. Finally, he nodded and gestured to a chair.
She sat and faced him across the desk. “I know about you accepting campaign money from the group targeting you. I know that it’s all a ploy for you to get voters’ sympathy.”
Her words must have been like a slap across the face—he reared back in shock.
“Edie. For God’s sake, you can’t believe I’m that sort of man.”
“I don’t know what you are. I don’t know you.”
“Christ,” he said softly, rumpling his sleek, perfect hair with his fingers. “That’s what they want everyone to believe. This is what they’re trying to do, Edie. They’re undermining all my claims of the attacks. They’ve done this before… with that senator in Ohio.”
Her stare bored into his. “Tell me what you mean.” Her voice took on one of command.
The senator drew up and leaned forward, hands on his desk. For the first time, she saw she also shared the shape of his fingers and fingernails. Her mind spun out on this revelation. She was seeing a parent that gave her up and making all the connections to him, things she’d wondered about herself for her entire life.
“The group got to the senator in Ohio some years back. Gave him funds but under false pretenses—the same terms they presented to me. Had I known what they really were, I never would have accepted that check. I would have shredded it to pieces. But I didn’t know. The things they promised involved my backing, that they wanted gun laws put into effect as much as I did.”
“Go on.” She didn’t want to see the desperate light in his eyes or feel the pang of sympathy she did.
“Once the check was signed and the deposit made, they came back to me, told me that now they owned me.”
She didn’t blink, listening intently to his story while searching him for signs of dishonesty.
“They started making demands. That I change my stance on the gun laws. That I side for no more laws and lesser restrictions on weapons. That the prison sentences for illegal arms dealers be lowered.”
She issued a slow breath, taking it all in, but said nothing.
“Edie.” He pushed to his feet and came around the desk to sit next to her. “This group is terrorizing all of us. You have to believe me when I say I did not sign up for this in order to get more voters’ support. When they did the same thing to the politician in Ohio, he spoke out and they discredited him. They put it out into the media that he had been staging the attacks. Of course, only a day passed before he was out of the running. This is what they want from me. I’ve resisted thus far. It hasn’t been easy.” The vehemence in his voice was the same passionate tone that had people following him, her included.
But it did not sound like a guilty man either.
“Please believe me. I know you think badly of me already, and I don’t blame you. I could have accepted the heat from your birth years ago, and I didn’t. I was afraid and… cowar
dly.” His blue eyes, just like hers, swam with tears. “I’m sorry for all of it. If I had it to do over, I’d never make the same mistake. You’d be in that photo with us, Edie.” He waved toward the photo on his desk.
She dropped her head, unwilling to show him the emotion on her own face… that looked just like his.
“Please don’t believe them. It’s what they want from you, from everybody. I’ve made mistakes in my life, but I would never do awful things—atrocities—to those I love.” Reaching out, he skimmed a thumb across her cheek.
Tears spilled over the rims of her eyes and tumbled down her cheeks. “You don’t have to claim to love me.”
“But I do.” The passion was back in his tone, and it raised gooseflesh on her arms. “How can I have a child out there in the world that I don’t love? I always have. But I’ve been wrong in allowing so many years to pass, Edie.”
She looked into his eyes and saw genuineness that struck her to the core.
“I’ll tell my wife. I’ll tell my kids they have a sister.”
She pulled away from his touch. “It’s not necessary to ruin your relationships. I’ve lived without you this long.”
He looked stricken for a moment, but it was replaced by awe. “I admire you, Edie. You’re strong like your mother.”
She believed everything he’d just told her. Now she could move forward.
She opened her mouth to speak and was cut off by a blast. An explosion that rocked the building.
Her father threw himself at her. She hit the floor with a smack, which knocked the wind out of her, and she curled onto her side like a bug, gasping for breath and trying to find reason.
“Stay down!” Her father hovered over her, shielding her with his body as a second explosion hit. An uncaring man wouldn’t do that.
In the back of her mind, she called out to Lennon.
* * * * *
Smoke wafted up all around Lennon, and a roar collected in his throat. He couldn’t even make out what was ahead of him, but he was looking for a fucking door—the door leading to Senator Arthur’s office.
To Edie.
“I can’t get a view. It’s filled with smoke.” Linc’s voice projected through his comms unit.
“Me either. Goddammit!”
There was no holding back.
“I’m going in.”
He took a Hail Mary step forward that could cost him his life if the floor collapsed from beneath him. After the back-to-back explosions, anything was possible, and he’d seen a lot of bad shit go down in situations like this.
Finding Edie was worth any risk. She had to be alive. He had to take her home to his momma, back to Ranger.
His boot didn’t fall through a hole, so he chanced another step. In a crouch to remain under the smoke, he pushed through. His weapon in hand hit something hard, and he came to a stop, finding a wall.
“Lennon, where the hell are you? You can’t split off!” Linc’s incensed tone held more than anger. Fear tinged it as well.
Lennon couldn’t think about that now. “I’m all right. I’m heading toward the office.”
“The office was the target—you have no idea if there even is an office!” Linc burst out.
“There’s gotta be. She’s gotta be alive, and I’m going to find her.” The smoke was filling the space, but no fire licked up the walls yet. He suspected it was in the floors below, and some of the Ranger Ops were down there now checking it out. They had just breached the building when the first explosion hit. Then the second had come out of nowhere.
He wouldn’t be shocked if there were more to come, but the calm part of himself said he must continue on regardless of the risk.
I have to reach you. I’m coming, Edie.
His heart was a constant drum in his ears.
“Goddammit, Lennon. Stop where you are. You’re not going without me.” Linc’s fury made his voice shaky.
“I’ve stopped. Get your ass up here—now.”
Shouts and commands from other members of the team volleyed back and forth as they discovered the root of the smoke, a blaze on the second floor of the building. Fire crews were already inside and were evacuating survivors.
Jesus Christ, was the rebel group proving they could take out the senator and his secret daughter in one strike, or had the attack been planned even before Edie set foot in the building?
Linc’s voice filled his ear again. “I’ve got eyes on you. I should break your nose for splitting off from me, you son of a bitch.”
Lennon grunted. “Like to see ya try. Let’s go.”
Together, they felt their way into the space, crouched beneath the worst of the smoke but still blind. He didn’t see the wall until it loomed up before him.
He had a mental map of the building he’d memorized in the days before they planned to set Edie as a decoy, and he knew this wall was the one before the senator’s main office. The receptionist should be right behind it.
He entered the space and felt the door. It wasn’t hot, but smoke trickled from beneath it, licking and curling upward. If they all weren’t dead from smoke inhalation, they’d be damn lucky. He had his mask in place, and they each carried a spare.
Running his hand along the door, he found the handle and flicked the lever downward. Smoke poured out.
“Edie!”
“Fuck,” Linc said from behind him.
He turned to see his brother had barreled right into what was probably the secretary, and she’d collapsed before she could reach the door.
“Take care of her. I’m going for Edie,” Lennon called out.
Not waiting for his brother’s agreement, he charged in. With all the smoke, the things that had fallen off the walls and furniture tossed in the explosion, finding her wouldn’t be easy.
He scanned the floor for her.
When he reached another door, he kicked it inward. “Edie!” He bellowed till his vocal cords shook.
“Oh my God! Lennon! Here!”
His heart gave a hard jolt, and he jerked into action. Getting to her took too many seconds, shoving through things that had been heaved over.
The moment he laid eyes on her and the senator, bent over her as if to protect her, Lennon knew he had the man to thank for keeping her safe until Lennon could reach her.
He grabbed her face and looked into her eyes. “Take this.” He ripped off his own mask and put it over her face. Above it, her eyes were very blue, red-rimmed from crying.
Reaching into his pack, he came out with the backup mask. “Here.” He thrust it into the senator’s hands. The gas mask filtered enough air to protect and provide purer oxygen, something they both needed and Lennon could survive without until Linc reached him with his backup mask.
“Are you hurt?” he asked Edie.
She shook her head. The chairs in the room were flipped and a filing cabinet had crashed to the ground.
“We have to get out. The building could collapse,” he said. “I need you both to stay down and hold onto each other, make a chain. I’m getting you out.”
Moving was slow, and in the hallway outside the office they found Linc. He was hoisting the receptionist over his shoulder. At that moment, firefighters burst into the space, and relief surged through Lennon.
They took the receptionist off Linc’s hands and provided Lennon with a mask.
“We’ll take her,” one said to Lennon, pointing to Edie.
He shook his head. “She’s with me. Him too.” Ranger Ops had to protect Senator Arthur.
The firefighters asked if anyone else was in that office, and Arthur told them no, that his assistant was elsewhere in the building at the time of the explosion.
Edie’s eyes widened. “Jake! Jake is somewhere in the building!”
Her ex-boyfriend. They’d discovered he hadn’t been fired with the rest of Arthur’s team.
Lennon nodded. “They’ll find him. C’mon.”
With them forming a chain again, and Linc bringing up the rear behind the senator, th
ey made painstaking progress out of the office and found the stairwell. Lennon took one look at it and saw that the explosion had crushed the foundation beneath the building in this area, making the stairs too perilous to use.
“Find another way,” he called to Linc.
“We fucking found the source of the explosion. Two delivery crates on the ground floor. Fucking residue all over the place down here,” Cav bit out through the comms.
“Search for more. Look for the assailants too.” That from Sully.
“What we need is eyes on Breckham,” Lennon said.
Edie turned her head to pierce him with a hard look.
He grasped her arm, heart flexing at the feel of her warm skin even through his glove, and towed her along to the opposite end of the building where the staircase could be still intact.
“Fuckers didn’t do a very good job. They thought those two little bombs would take down the building? We might be sitting cockeyed, but we’re definitely not collapsing.” Cav’s words reached them all.
“Yet.” Sully’s harsh word gave Lennon an instant image of 9-11 in his head and what had happened to those buildings.
This wasn’t nearly as tall. The bombs had been small potatoes compared to those jets striking the twin towers. But it made his blood run cold.
The urge to get Edie out and safe burned through him, leaving him sweating like he’d just run through a wall of fire.
From the corner of his eye, he caught Linc’s hand signal.
People on the move. Headed toward them.
He shoved Edie into the corner and pressed his back to her. Linc had the senator down and out of sight. In this side of the building, the smoke wasn’t nearly as thick, and he made out the backs of two men who were coming from the good stairwell.
They were moving toward the senator’s office rapid speed.
Edie’s fingers dug into his spine, and he reached back to squeeze her knee.
He got a good ID on the men. They had no firefighters’ gear, and they sure as hell weren’t Ranger Ops.
When he spotted a weapon in one’s hand, he raised his weapon and locked eyes with Linc. They’d done this before.
