Mason Walker series Box Set

by Alex Howell

  “Family members of the First Family have been kidnapped,” Mason said. “Two girls and one boy. Nieces and nephew of the First Lady.”

  “Oh, God…” Clara said, trailing off, undoubtedly thinking about how she had been in her own such spot mere months ago. “Do you know if they’re alive?”

  “For now, they should be, yeah. We’ve got three days.”

  “And where are you going?”

  Ok, now we’re getting a little too deep into the woods here. We have to pull back before she starts getting any stupid ideas.

  “To the Midwest.”

  Clara, at first, said nothing, and Mason, satisfied that he had said enough, took the box to the vehicle. Though obviously heavy, it was doable with some effort. As far as Mason was concerned, Clara was frustrated at being left alone, but, with the additional security measures, he didn’t think that she had anything further to worry about.

  When Mason returned to say goodbye to his only child, though, he saw his daughter standing there, hands on her hips, looking much fiercer and more determined than she did when Mason walked in. She didn’t have to say a word for Mason to know that what would happen next would displease him.

  As it turned out, it was even worse than he had hoped for.

  “I want to go with you.”

  I was just hoping she’d say I owed her more training. But to go with me?

  I’ve got a better chance of being Warrior in my sleep than of this nonsense happening.

  Mason crossed his arms, trying to best figure out how to answer such an insane request. It wasn’t like she had requested he send her regular phone calls and updates—she’d asked to go with him? Whatever training Clara had gotten was nowhere near what she needed to even fend for herself in such situations, let alone actually contribute to the team. Hell, Mason could have given her a year of training and Mason would not have felt comfortable taking her.

  Really, there was no amount of training that would Mason comfortable with such a move, and that was because Clara was his daughter. He could know that others called her the world’s greatest assassin, and it wouldn’t be enough. He hadn’t put his time in so Clara could follow in his footsteps; he’d done so so she could have a much easier life.

  “Clara, there is no way that is happening,” Mason said. “Even if I wanted to, Onyx would never—”

  “I’m serious,” she said, her eyes as sharp as Mason could ever remember them being. “I want to go. I know what those kids are suffering from. I am not going to stand by.”

  Why, Clara, do you have to be like this. Especially when I have things to take care of.

  “Clara, I appreciate the fire, but you don’t have any way you can help.”

  “Oh, really?”

  Mason was growing frustrated, as this was not the time and place to be having this discussion. The last thing he needed was to be delayed on his mission run because of the most ridiculous fight he could possibly ever imagine with his own daughter. What was she going to do, empathize with Warrior and get him free? Use her powers of connection with the kids to locate them?

  There was just no way. Mason wasn’t trying to be rude and overly dismissive, but this wasn’t a video game, and it wasn’t capture the flag. The ramifications for failing—a very likely outcome for Clara—were much too high for this to be her first, second, third, fourth, or even fifth mission.

  No matter how much she wanted it otherwise.

  “Yes, really,” Mason said, growing harder in tone. “You will get killed if you come. I’m not going to let that happen. I know you’re feeling like you want to get back or something like that, but you need a good two, three more years of training before you can even think about helping. You got an issue with it? Take it up with Luke Simon.”

  “Damnit, dad!”

  Mason snapped at attention to that. He could not remember the last time she had sworn at him, even something as mild as damn. She was serious… but, unfortunately, that just meant this would be an even fussier conversation. Not how I wanted my last conversation before Wichita to go. Did it really have to go down like this?

  “What do you think we’ve done for the last three months? All the gun training, the martial arts, the fitness—”

  None of which are even close to what you’d be dealing with on a mission like this.

  “Yes, it’s prepared you well in case someone on the street tries to hurt you or a potential boyfriend pulls some tricks on you, but that’s a very, very far reach from international terrorists who are holding the First Family children hostage to start nuclear war!”

  Clara, somehow, did not flinch. Mason supposed when the threat before was to start World War III, the threat of a nuclear war didn’t seem as overwhelming and strong as otherwise. But this had already stretched on a bit longer than it needed to. Really, anything beyond the initial rejection of her request was a conversation that went far past what Mason had originally wanted to emphasize.

  “I’m sorry, Clara, but you’re staying here and that’s final.”

  “Dad!”

  Seriously? Am I seriously having this fight with my 18-year-old daughter who just got kidnapped right now?

  Or maybe that’s why she’s having this argument… either way.

  “Clara, you’re staying here. It’s safe here, and it is not safe over there. I am not letting you get hurt.”

  Mason took two steps to hug her, but she stepped back, as if an attempt to keep the conversation continuing.

  And then she said the words that dug deeper than if she had taken an actual knife and stabbed him in the chest.

  “It wasn’t safe at home when I was kidnapped here, was it?”

  Mason reeled, stunned. He almost became emotional, still having blamed himself plenty of times for the way that one had happened. She picked the one thing that would have gotten to him on the course of a mission.

  And while Clara might have thought that it would have gotten him to weaken up and acquiesce to her wishes, all it did was enrage him to a point he had not been at in some time, if ever, with his daughter.

  “Clara,” he said as sternly as possible, speaking very slowly to avoid total implosion. “You. Are. Staying. Here. And. That. Is. Final. Luke upgraded the security to this place with so many alarms, cameras, and other things I’m not going to tell you about that you have nothing to fear. You understand? As soon as the mission wraps up, I will be home. But you are not coming under any circumstances, and that is my order to you as a father.”

  “Dad!”

  That’s enough. Let’s get this wrapped up and moved on.

  “I love you, Clara,” he said, going to hug her.

  But Clara again took a step back. Unlike last time, though, when her eyes showcased a fiery resistance to anything Mason said, they now seemed much softer, much more emotional, and much more yearning.

  “Dad, I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “That’s why I want to be with you. I worry if you go and something happens and I’m not there…”

  As sweet as it was, as genuine as it seemed, Mason couldn’t but suspect by now she was just playing mind games. She was looking for any opening she could get to toy with his emotions, and whatever she got, she would pry and pry until he said yes. But there was no faster way to both get his daughter killed and for him to lose his position on Onyx than to take her with him to Kansas.

  “I appreciate that, Clara,” he said. “I really do. But my answer has not changed. No. Nothing will happen to me. I will come home. To you, because you’ll be here.”

  “Dad!” she said, the soft facade fading. I knew it was a trick. “I’m 18 years old! I’m not a kid!”

  “Compared to the others in the unit, you’re just a baby!”

  As soon as Mason said those words, he regretted it. He’d just demeaned his own daughter.

  At this point, he just wanted to get on the damn train and out to Wichita.

  “How dare you! Do you remember what I went through? You don’t think I can help? Dad! I know w
hat’s it like to be kidnapped! You don’t think that might prove helpful on your mission?!?”

  “Clara!” Mason roared, so loudly that even Clara was shook out of her stupor. Even Mason needed a second to collect himself after the vehemence with which he bellowed. “My word is final. You will not come.”

  Before she could respond—not that she looked like she wanted to after that thunderous shout—Mason hugged Clara, slammed the door shut, and got into the government vehicle to head to the train depot. Before the vehicle had started even moving, Mason found himself lying on the massage table, enraged, confused, and hurt by what had just transpired.

  What in the hell had gotten into Clara? Mason desperately tried to think if he had somehow missed something that would have encouraged her to get involved. He had told her that she had the blood of a soldier, but could that really be interpreted as him saying she should join the special ops? Without any other kind of military training? Most especially after he’d qualified it by joking that she wasn’t as good a shot as he was?

  He began to feel extraordinarily guilty. If Bree were here right now, she would slap him around a few times for the argument he’d just had, and justifiably so. He could have handled it much better, most notably not calling her a baby. It was a moment of weakness from anger, and Mason knew that he had to do better.

  Emotions were just running high, especially because it involved a kidnapping. Clara was probably feeling triggered in some fashion and wasn’t thinking rationally. When Mason got back from Kansas, he would apologize for losing his temper to his daughter; he’d take them out for ice cream or something; and then he’d go with her to Stanford, make sure she got settled in, and go from there.

  That… that seemed like the best course of thought. It wasn’t the easiest, of course, most especially since there was no guarantee mere ice cream and a trip to Stanford would heal all of their wounds. But what else was Mason going to think?

  And if she insisted on going on the next mission? If she somehow still had that hysteria that demanded she partake in the dangerous life that even the Navy SEAL vet felt unsure about? If she was serious about getting more training so she could go out into the field the next time something like this came up?

  Well, it was a damn good thing that she was about to be on the other side of the country then.

  7

  August 18th, 2028

  12:34 p.m.

  Alexandria, VA

  At a small home on the outskirts of Washington D.C., at a place where yellow police tape was ignored by the two members of Onyx assigned to this particular task, Duke and Case headed to the First Lady’s sister’s home on the search for any clue, any sign, any hint of who might have taken the kids.

  Case, for his part, felt the usual confidence that accompanied him. He had never, ever failed on a mission as a Navy SEAL, and he saw no reason to believe that this would be the case now. He knew that he wouldn’t unravel everything over the course of a single day and night, but three days to figure things out was like giving a football team a five-touchdown advantage to start the game. It would take a miracle for this to go badly, both because he had his usual detective skills at work and because he had six other people who were more than ready and willing to investigate every potential lead they would come across.

  But Duke, the old man of Onyx, was frustrated and not afraid to show it. Duke had the appearance of a man who wanted to find the perp, point a gun at his head, then shoot him and kick his corpse. Battles weren’t won in children’s bedrooms; they were won out on the field, against the enemy, and by blowing up them and their valuables, their possessions and armory. Battles won circumstantially were nothing more than luck; battles won by getting down on the ground were actual victories.

  And thanks to the actions of the very country that he’d sworn to defend, Duke was now reduced to going through children’s rooms like a nanny. Case had done his best to lift Duke’s spirits on the ride over, but all Case could pick up was a sense of disgust with the SEALs and a hint of arrogance from the old SEAL.

  “All right, let’s start with the children’s rooms first, shall we?” Case said with a pep in his step as he approached the front door. “Bet we’ll uncover some mysteries there. It’s not like the kids were in mom and dad’s room.”

  “Yeah, bet we will,” Duke growled, rolling his eyes. “Let’s just make this quick, shall we? Rather be with Mason shooting terrorists up in Kansas City.”

  Case wondered how Duke had ever gotten onto the team, but knowing his decades of experience, he decided that it was like everyone’s favorite grump professor—he’d complain about “kids these days” all the time, but when he dropped a nugget of information, it would prove incredibly useful and invaluable.

  The two split up, each going into one of the girls’ rooms. Case went in slowly, taking his time and examining everything; every wooden strip on the floor, every toy, every bed linen, everything in the bathroom all merited attention. If something so much as seemed to be the wrong color, it was worth paying attention to. First appearances didn’t suggest anything unusual—the room was in minor disarray, but that was expected for a young child.

  Case had long ago learned that it was the little things that helped. He’d often uncover IEDs, for example, because he noticed how one side of a pebble didn’t seem as dirty as the rest, suggesting that there had been recent movement in the area. He’d once found a long-hidden member of ISIS, for example, because he noticed a tribal leader in Syria used a phrase he had never heard before. He went by Case because he always did everything “just in case.”

  Duke, however, had far less patience. He quickly scanned the room, looking annoyed that he had to spend his time on such trivial tasks. He didn’t see anything obvious or telling—no blood, no signs of strangle, no gunpowder, no weapons. As far as he was concerned, this was a waste of time. Warrior was in Kansas, the kids were in Kansas, and thus every available member of Onyx and the military should have descended upon Kansas in pursuit of the deranged man.

  The only thing either person noticed that seemed unusual was that the windows were open and had been since the previous night, but that wasn’t likely to be anything that could tie them to a specific person in Warrior or whatever gang or terrorist cell he was associated with. It was just an escape route, nothing more, nothing less. And even then, there was the decent possibility that the kids had just been warm at night and needed the window open. That didn’t rule out it being an escape route, but it did make it less likely clues would be found by the windows.

  Duke eventually figured he’d seen everything and went to see Case, who was not even halfway through his room. The sight of Duke brought a smile meant to engage Duke, but all it did was aggravate the older SEAL.

  “Would you hurry the hell up?” he growled. “What’s taking you so damn long anyways?”

  “So damn long?” Case said, looking back with a deflective smile. “The fact that we have to look for everything. You can’t be looking with too much caution here, you know. We are dealing with the First Family’s kids.”

  Duke rolled his eyes. He grumbled something about how that was the job of the agents in suits, not the soldiers in uniform.

  And then Case’s eyes spotted something.

  “Case, if you will, in point.”

  He put some gloves on, held up a small piece of woven cotton, and looked at Duke as if the senior soldier should know exactly what he was looking at.

  “You know what this is?”

  Duke shook his head no. Not a dead enemy, he thought. Not an enemy, period.

  “It’s the cotton you’d see on the middle of bandages,” Case said. “Which means our little friend Warrior probably had something fall off one of the kids when they took this one. And so…”

  He put it into the bag and looked at Duke with a smirk.

  “Do you want me to tell you if it also smells like chloroform to you? So you can go to sleep and not have to worry about this? I mean, if you think this is a waste of t
ime, I can ensure that it’s not and help put you to sleep.”

  Duke swore at him, waved his hand dismissively, and crossed his arms. Though Case had made a habit of deliberately crossing social etiquette lines, often times for the long-term purpose of relaxing his teammates just ever so slightly, he suspected that he might have crossed a real line here. Duke seemed unusually annoyed and displeased to be where he was, and Case knew that the last thing a relatively new unit like Onyx needed was someone this disgruntled. Nothing killed the potency of a team faster than discord, distrust, and disapproval.

  And as one of the younger ones, Case had more to prove than Duke to the senior leaders.

  “Talk to me, Duke,” he said, assuming a serious expression. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

  Duke shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, snorted, and nodded his head, as if coming to agreement with the voices in his head.

  “Marshal’s got it all wrong, you know,” he said. “I’m not an inspector. I’m a killer. I should be on the road to Kansas with the new guy right now, not poking around children’s bedrooms like some street cops. I know what you’ve said, but it’s not right. It’s just not right.”

  “I know, but—”

  But Duke had seemingly caught fire, and he showed no signs of slowing down now. Case decided silence was the best move on his part.

  “Frankly, Case, I shouldn’t even be in Onyx,” he growled. “I should still be with the SEALs. And if I was, I’d be handling much more important missions. Instead, some idiot young gun came in with no experience and no brains and is probably dead now.”

  Case almost lashed back, incredulous at how rescuing the nieces and nephew of the First Lady wasn’t the most important mission, but realizing that such a move would only splinter the team further, he swallowed his words and found more diplomatic ones. Maybe let Luke know. I can’t imagine Duke will be good for camaraderie on the team.