by Debra Webb
Sue passed her hand beneath the sofa and then sat back on her heels, her heart fluttering in her chest. “You know how I told you upstairs I didn’t think anything of importance was missing?”
“Yeah.” Hunter stopped at the entrance to the dining area, his hand braced against the wall.
“I was wrong.”
“What’s missing?”
“They took a picture of Drake.”
Chapter 14
Hunter tripped to a stop as a shot of adrenaline spiked through his system. “You’re sure? Did you check under the sofa?”
She held up an empty picture frame. “It was in here—a shot of him at the beach just a few months ago. It was my most recent picture of him.”
When Hunter thought his legs could function properly, he pushed off the wall and joined Sue on the floor. Shoulder to shoulder, they searched the floor for the missing picture.
He even pulled all the cushions off the sofa to check behind them. “We don’t know if they took it on purpose or it was stuck to something else they took out of here, or maybe it’s still lost in the house somewhere.”
Sue remained on the floor, legs curled beneath her. “Why would they take a picture of Drake unless they wanted to know what he looked like?”
“They have no way of knowing where he is, right?” He stretched out a hand to Sue and helped her to her feet, pulling her into his arms.
He’d wanted to remain angry at her for keeping Drake from him and a core of that anger still burned in his gut, but she was the mother of his son. He had a son, and the joy of that reality blotted out every other negative feeling.
“You’re going to call your parents ASAP and tell them to keep an extra eye on Drake. Your father, at least, will understand the significance of that, won’t he?”
“I’ll make him understand.” She broke away from him and pounced on her purse, dragging her cell phone from an outside pocket.
“You make that call, and I’ll work on the kitchen. Hell, I might even locate that picture. On the beach, right?”
She dipped her head, wide-eyed, and tapped her phone to place the call.
As Hunter banged pots and pans back into what he hoped were their right places, he strained to hear Sue from the next room, but all he got was worried murmurs. He hoped the old CIA man was up to the task.
When she joined him in the kitchen, her face had lost its sharp angles. “My dad’s on it. I think it’ll be fine. They live in a pretty small town, and it’s not like Drake is even school-age and out of their sight.”
“That sounds good.” He swung open a cupboard door. “Is this right?”
They finished putting the house back together and Sue watered her plants and collected the mail that was at least in a locked mailbox in the front—not that the intruders couldn’t have broken into the mailbox. They’d done a bang-up job of breaking into Sue’s house and wreaking havoc without raising any suspicion in the neighborhood.
When they were back in the car, Sue turned to him as she snapped her seat belt. “Should we head straight to the storage unit and skip lunch?”
“Are you kidding?” He patted his stomach. “That breakfast seems like a long time ago.”
“It was. It’s still not daylight saving time and this lunch is more like dinner and it might be dark by the time we get to the storage unit.”
“People check on their stuff at all hours of the day and night. I checked their website, and they’re open twenty-four hours, as long as you have the code for the gate—and we have it.”
“She wrote down two sets of numbers. Do you think one set is for a lock?”
“I hope so, because we don’t have a key, and I don’t feel like breaking into a storage unit. The company probably has those units under CCTV surveillance, and we wouldn’t last long trying to break into her unit.”
“Then lunch—or dinner it is. Luckily, the place I had in mind for lunch serves dinner, too, and it’s not too fussy, so we can get a quick bite and head out to the units.”
They did just that, and as Hunter shoveled the last forkful of mashed potatoes into his mouth, Sue waved down the waiter for their check.
She pulled out her wallet before he could even wipe his hands on his napkin. “I’ll get this one.”
Hunter dragged the napkin across his face. “You seem like you’re in a big hurry now when before you acted like we had all the time in the world.”
“Yeah, that was before those lowlifes broke into my place and trashed it, stole a picture of Drake.” She waved the check and her credit card at the waiter.
Sensing her urgency, the waiter returned with the receipt in record time and Sue stood up and scribbled her signature. “It’s still somewhat light out.”
Hunter dragged his jacket from the back of the chair. “Why are you so hell-bent on getting to this storage place before dark?”
“Storage units are creepy enough without having a pack of terrorists dogging your every move.”
“There’s no way they know where this place is. That paper was hidden in The Falcon’s shoe, and they didn’t find it when they searched her.”
“I don’t know. They seem to be everywhere we are.”
As she headed for the door, Hunter gulped down the last of his water and followed her out to the car. He’d already put the storage unit address into his phone’s GPS, and he turned it on when they got into the car.
“Just forty minutes away.”
Sue cranked her head over her shoulder. “I hope nobody followed us from my place.”
“Did you notice anyone? You had your eyes on your mirror the whole way over here.”
“I didn’t, but then I didn’t notice anyone following us from the barbershop, did you?”
“Wasn’t looking.” He adjusted his own rearview mirror and watched a white car pull out behind them. He eased out a breath when the car turned off. “Now you have me jumpy.”
“Good.” She punched his arm. “You should be.”
“You know, we’ve been going a mile a minute since I found out I had a son. You were supposed to fill me in at your place, but we were otherwise engaged there, and then we spent our meal talking about The Falcon’s storage facility.” He drew a cross over his heart. “I promise—no recriminations. I know I don’t need to repeat how disappointed I am or...upset.”
“That sounds like recriminations to me.” She set her jaw and turned her head to stare out the window.
“I’m sorry.” He rolled his shoulders. “Did I also tell you how happy I am to have a child? I can’t wait to meet him, and I want to play a role in his life—including financial. I’ll pay child support or whatever the courts order.”
“I hope we don’t have to go that route. We can figure this out together without lawyers or courts, can’t we?”
“I’d like that. Now tell me about Drake. Does he have a middle name?” His head jerked toward her. “What’s his last name?”
“I-it’s Chandler. I had to do that, but we can change it to Mancini. I don’t have a problem with that.”
She slid him a sideways glance, probably to see if he planned to slam his fist into the dash again. He didn’t. Drake Mancini.
“Middle name?”
“It’s Hunter.”
He swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “Thanks for that.”
“It was the least I could do.”
Then she launched into a history of Drake Hunter Mancini—his likes, his dislikes, his first everythings.
He raised one eyebrow at her. “Does he ask about a daddy?”
“He’s practicing the word. Amelia’s husband is his father figure—for now—but he calls him Uncle Ben, not Daddy.” She twisted her fingers in her lap. “I always figured those questions would come once he started school and saw all the other dads. Now we can avoid that.”
&
nbsp; Too soon, he took the turnoff for the storage units, located in a light industrial area of Virginia. He’d already memorized the address and the two codes, and as they pulled up to the security gate, he leaned out the window and entered the first code The Falcon had written on that slip of paper.
The gate glided open, and Hunter turned to Sue to share a fist bump. “First hurdle.”
Sue pressed her nose to the window glass. “This first row has units in the hundreds. Hers is in the five hundreds.”
He rolled to the end of the first row. “Right or left?”
“There’s a sign up ahead. Drive forward.”
As the headlights illuminated the sign, they both said at the same time, “Left.”
Hunter swung the car around the corner. “These are three hundreds and the numbers are getting bigger.”
“They just jumped from three to five. This is our row.”
Hunter slowed the car to a crawl as Sue called out the storage unit numbers until she recited The Falcon’s.
He parked vertically in front of unit number 533, leaving on his headlights. “Just in case the unit doesn’t have a light inside.”
“Great. We’re going to have to fumble around in there in the dark?”
“We’ll see.” Hunter scrambled from the car, the second code running through his head. He punched it in to the keypad, and the lock on the big silver sliding door clicked on the other side.
He grabbed the handle and yanked it to the side. The door opened with a squeal, and he rolled it wide.
Tipping his head back, he said, “Looks like there’s no light source inside.”
“Why are they open twenty-four hours if they don’t provide lighting in the units?” Sue brushed past him to step inside the chilly space. “Or heating.”
Hunter jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I guess you have to provide your own. You have about twenty cell phones on you now, don’t you? We can use all those flashlights.”
She tapped the phone in her hand and a beam of light shot out from it. “I have just my own phone right now, but yours and mine should be able to do the trick, and once you move out of the way, those headlights should at least let us see what’s in here.”
He shoved the door to the end and shifted to the side to allow the lights from the car to flood the unit.
Sue lifted her nose to the air. “At least she didn’t stash any dead bodies in here.”
“That doesn’t mean there aren’t a few skeletons in her unit...or her closet.” He kicked the bottom box of a stack. “I hope these aren’t files.”
“One way to find out.” Sue attacked the box on the top, lifting the lid and knocking it to the floor. She sneezed. “Kind of dusty.”
He sidled up next to her, aiming the light from his phone into the box. “What’s in here?”
Sue reached inside and pulled out three passports. She fanned them under the light. “Two US, one Canadian.”
Hunter plucked one from her fingers and thumbed it open. “It’s not The Falcon. It’s a man. Recognize him?”
Sue rubbed her finger across the picture. “Nope.”
Hunter flipped open the other two passports. They featured the same man, his appearance slightly altered with glasses, facial hair, different colored contacts...and a different name.
Sue dug through the rest of the box’s contents. “Same stuff. Passports, some birth certificates—everything you need to establish a fake identity for purposes of travel.”
“These must be all the agents The Falcon used for her black ops missions.”
Sue rapped on the second box. “This proves she did have black ops missions, anyway, doesn’t it? Helps me out.”
“Let’s keep looking for something more recent.” Hunter kicked another box and crouched down to paw through some gadgets. “This is regular spy stuff here—old cameras, listening devices.”
“Why would she want me to see all this stuff?” Sue hoisted the box on top and settled it on the floor. She replaced its lid and dived into the second box. “More of the same.”
“It proves she was running an operation, for sure, or several operations.”
Sue gasped. “Oh my God.”
Hunter spun around. “What is it?”
“My father.” She held up a passport in each hand and waved them. “These are my father’s. He must’ve worked with or for The Falcon himself.”
“Is there any doubt now he got you into the unit?”
She fired the passports back into the box. “He had to know the price I had to pay. He was allowed to have a family and a home life before opting into that unit.”
“You’re done with that now, Sue. The Falcon is dead. The mission is over. You need to get your life back.”
She waved her arm at the stacks. “And all this is gonna help me. I need my job...and my reputation back.”
Hunter tripped over a metal filing cabinet. He flipped it open and rifled through the contents. “This is more like it. Paperwork on some of her missions. Forget the passports and spy gadgets. This is the stuff we need.”
Sue stepped over a stuffed suitcase and crouched before another filing cabinet. “At least this one doesn’t have two inches of dust coating it.”
“Yeah, those are the ones we need to be looking at. I’m sure she directed you to this storage unit for a reason—and it wasn’t to find your father’s fake passports.”
“Okay, minimal dust.” Sue’s muffled voice came from the back of the unit.
Still in a crouch, Hunter moved two steps to the side and ducked into another filing cabinet. The headlights beaming into the unit flickered.
He called out to Sue. “I hope my car battery’s not dying.”
“That’s all you need. You already cracked the dash.”
The lights flickered again and Hunter twisted his head over his shoulder. A flash of light illuminated the space, blinding him.
An explosion rocked the unit and then the sliding door squealed closed—trapping them inside with the blaze.
Chapter 15
The explosion had thrown Sue backward, and she clutched a stack of folders to her chest as she fell to the floor.
As the acrid smoke burned her eyes and lungs, she screamed for Hunter. He’d been behind her, closer to the source of the blast...and now the fire that raged, blocking their exit from the storage unit.
“Sue, are you all right?”
At the sound of Hunter’s voice, she choked out a sob. “I’m here. I’m okay.”
The boxes provided fuel for the flames and they licked greedily at their sustenance as they danced closer to the back of the unit. Sue flattened her body on the cement floor, the files digging into her belly.
Hunter appeared, crawling through the gray smoke. “Thank God you’re not hurt. You’re not, are you?”
“No. You?”
“Fine.” He even scooted forward and kissed the tip of her nose. “Don’t worry. I have a plan.”
“The fire’s blocking the door, isn’t it?” She rubbed her stinging eyes. “What kind of plan could you possibly have?”
“All those spy gadgets I was making fun of?” He reached behind him and dragged a box forward that looked as if it contained wet suits.
“We’re trapped in a room with fire. We’re not underwater.” Her gaze shifted over his head and her nostrils flared. “It’s bad, Hunter.”
He pulled one of the wet suits from the box. “These aren’t wet suits, Sue. They’re fire-retardant suits. They’ll allow us to literally walk through flames—if they’re not too old and decrepit.”
“Why’d you have to add that last part?” She snatched the suit from his hands and shimmied into it while she was on the ground.
“Pull up the hood and put on the gloves.” A crash made her jump but Hunter didn’t blink an eye. “Hurry! There’s netting that d
rops over the face but cover your face with your gloved hands. Make sure your hair is all tucked in and hang on to me.”
Suited up, they crawled across the floor for as long as they could. Then Hunter gave her the command to stand up in the fire.
Sue’s mind went blank as she covered her face with one hand and kept the other pressed against Hunter’s back. She had a moment of panic when they reached the door, but Hunter yanked it back.
As the air rushed into the storage unit, the flames surged, but Hunter dragged her outside. He pulled her several feet away from the blazing unit and then left her.
Seconds later, she heard the car idling beside her. As she lurched to her knees, Hunter came around behind her and hoisted her to her feet, half dragging, half carrying her to the car.
With her door still hanging open, Hunter punched the accelerator and they sped from the facility. Once outside, he pulled over beneath a freeway on-ramp. “Call 911 from your burner phone.”
She reached for the phone on the console, but her thick gloves wouldn’t allow her to pick it up.
“I’ve got it.” Hunter yanked off one of his gloves and made the call to 911 to report the fire.
Then he flipped back his hood. “Are you all right? Did you get through okay?”
Sue pounded her chest through her suit. “I think so, but my lungs hurt.”
“Mine too. Let’s take these things off and see if they worked.”
“We’re sitting here talking to each other.” She reached out and smoothed a thumb over one of his eyebrows. “Outside of some singed hair, I’d say we made it.”
Hunter got out of the car and tugged at the suit, kicking it off his legs. He ran his hands over his arms, legs and head. He poked his head into the car. “Do you like that thing so much you plan to wear it?”
Sue hugged herself. “I love it. It saved our lives.”
Hunter walked around to the passenger’s side and opened the door. “I’ll help you.”
As she slid out of the car, sirens wailed in the distance. “At least the fire engines are on the way, but the cops are going to wonder why we left the scene. Your rental car is going to be on camera, along with our activities.”
