“We are having a briefing in ten minutes. No need to come down, we’ll use video conferencing for you, Drew and Tamika,” she said briskly. “You’re sitting this one out.”
“Hell no.”
“Don’t argue, Russ.” She suddenly sounded tired. “You won’t be fit to return to active duty for the next month. But we’ll need someone behind the tech. I’ll talk to you in ten.”
He ended the call and swore. Emily was always there for them and now that she needed them, he could not offer any help.
“You are the best tech person out there. I’ve never met anyone who could hack into anything. They’re going to need you more behind your computer,” Hope said gently.
Her words eased some of the frustration in him. She was right. He could still help out, in fact, they were going to need some of his gadgets for this mission. He reached for her and kissed her.
“One more reason why I love you so much,” he said between kisses. “You are so full of wisdom.”
As he deepened the kiss, Rusty knew that he had finally found one woman who was strong, loyal and had a large heart. She was more than he deserved and he vowed to do all he could to keep her happy for the rest of his life.
BOOK FIVE
Chapter One
Tuesday, 6:30 a.m.
Emily parked her van in one of the metered parking lots. She pressed the lock and crossed over to Jackson Park. Taking a deep breath, she did a few stretches then using a scrunchie, caught her hair into a ponytail. She had grown it out recently and did not want it bothering her as she was running.
She looked around, there were a few people out running that early in the morning, but not many and that was why she liked Jackson Park. When she needed to clear her mind, she came here for a run. Letting out a breath, she patted the firearm beneath her light running jacket and began to run.
As her feet pounded the pavement, she regulated her breathing and tried to clear her mind. There was so much going on in her head and she just needed to empty it all. The steady beat of her feet usually helped to get her to that mindless state where she did not need to think about anything, except placing one foot in front of the other. This time, however, it was not as effective.
The last mission had been intense and one of her men had been shot. For one scary moment, she thought she had lost him. Since she started Silver Shield, her security firm, seven years ago, she had never lost any of her operators and all of them, except one, had been with her almost from the beginning. Mentally, she had prepared for the day one of them might be fatally shot, or at least she thought she’d prepared. But nothing had prepared her for seeing Rusty lying in his own blood that night.
Thankfully, he didn’t die, and after being in a coma for several days and undergoing surgery, he was finally sent home to recuperate. It had been a huge relief for her, but Emily had not been able to shake the feeling she’d had seeing one of her men go down. It was not an experience she wanted to repeat, ever. Finally, she could take some time to cool off, but that message from Wayne had been bothering her. She had received a message from her ex-husband that his life was in danger.
As soon as she’d been able to, she had tried reaching him, but for some reason was unable to get hold of him. This was strange and was bothering her no end. As a billionaire tycoon, Wayne Carter was a public figure. Sure, he could go underground whenever he wanted to, and he often did, but Emily had never been unable to reach him. It gave her a very bad feeling.
She regulated her breathing and fell into a rhythmic movement as she ran. Nothing cleared her thoughts like running, and Chicago’s Southside Park was one of her favorite running spots, particularly this early in the morning. As she ran, she mused about her problem. She would have to travel to New York City and see how she could find Wayne and give him a piece of her mind about sending alarming messages and then going incommunicado.
She got to the trail with lots of trees on each side, then suddenly veered left, going off the path unto the slightly wooded area. Moving quickly, she pressed her back to a tree and brought out her firearm, then waited. A few moments later, a man in a tracksuit and running shoes stopped at the spot where she had disappeared. From the corner of her eye, she saw him look around casually, then step into the wooded area after her. She waited till his back was at her then slipped behind another tree. He turned in surprise and found himself staring straight into the barrel of her gun. Emily slipped off the safety. When he heard the click, he raised his hands above his head.
“Hey, easy with that thing,” he said calmly.
“Who are you and why have you been following me?” She had noticed him almost as soon as she got out of her car and crossed over to Jackson Park. She had decided to wait till they were in a more secluded area to confront him.
“You don’t want to do that, Sergeant.”
Emily did not blink. It was obvious he knew who she was, which was a good place for her to start. It told her a lot of things, but mostly, it told her that this encounter was not random. She studied him now. He was of average height, about the same as her five feet, seven inches. He also had a slight build, but his slightly slanted eyes gave away his Asian origin.
“What do you want?” she asked, keeping her tone as even as his.
Just then she heard three clicks behind her. She knew immediately that there were three people holding firearms to her head. However, her gaze on the first man did not waver. She trained her gun on him, her hands steady.
“You are outnumbered, Sergeant Silver. Would be best for you to drop your gun.”
Emily heard it then, the slight Chinese accent almost overshadowed by the New York accent.
“It might be best, but not for me. You can call off your goons now or they make one wrong move and I pump you full of lead.” Either way worked for her.
He gave her a long assessing stare then looked back at the others. With barely a lifted eyebrow, she heard them slide the safety of their guns back into place.
“They’re gone now. We talk.”
He turned and began to walk.
Emily thought seriously about walking away, but curiosity got the better of her. Obviously they knew her and she had no idea who they were. That alone was enough reason to give him a listening ear. She turned and was not surprised to find that the other people had melted into the background. Even though she could no longer see them, she knew they were there. She also knew that if they wanted her dead, they would have shot her without a second thought.
She followed the man to a nearby park bench. He was already seated when she took a seat beside him.
“Talk,” she said.
“We are looking for your husband, Sergeant,” he began without preamble.
“Ex-husband,” she corrected automatically.
“Same thing,” he said, waving his hand dismissively.
No, no…it was not the same thing. The ex in ex-husband meant that she was done with him. He was no longer considered a part of her life in any way, therefore his whereabouts were not her business. It was over. Finito.
“I have no idea where he is,” was all she said.
“We know, but he will contact you.”
“Who is we?” she asked.
He glanced at her. “The family, but you will get to know about us eventually.” He got to his feet and gave her a piece of paper. “If you hear from your husband, you tell him we are looking for him. It does not matter how he hides, we’ll find him.”
Emily got to her feet as well. “I don’t understand.”
“He does.”
“Wait! Why are you looking for Wayne?”
“He has something we want. When he gets in touch, you tell him that if we don’t get it soon, we’ll be shipping that precious cargo of his.”
Emily frowned. The cryptic messages were beginning to annoy her.
“Look, I’m really not in the mood to play games so you need to tell me what this is about.”
“He has seventy-two hours. Goodbye, Ms. Silver. No doubt
we’ll meet again. Soon.”
Emily watched him walk back to the trail and then disappear out of her view. She looked down at the paper in her hand. It was a phone number with a name, Peng Ho.
Wayne had seventy-two hours to get something to the family. The family. Oh shit. That could only mean one thing. She wondered how on earth Wayne had gotten himself mixed up with the Chinese mafia? Those guys were vicious and ruthless and if they were after him, then it was something really bad. She had to find him soon. She walked back to the path and jogged back the way she’d come.
As she jogged towards her car, she pulled out her phone. “Mom, please book me on the next flight to New York.”
“Sure honey. Is everything okay? You sound funny.”
She slowed to a walk. “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know. But I’ll brief you once I come in.”
“I’ve booked you on the next flight. That’s eleven thirty a.m. on Delta.”
Emily glanced at her watch. It was not even seven a.m. yet, which gave her about four hours to get ready. “Thanks.”
She got into her van. As she drove away, all that filled her mind was that for whatever reason, Wayne had three days. Three days till what…she had no idea. But she knew for sure was that she needed to find him ASAP.
**
Wednesday, 6:00 p.m.
Tired from lack of sleep, Emily returned to Chicago. Her trip to New York had been futile. It almost seemed as though Wayne had disappeared from the face of the earth. She had been unable to reach him and none of her contacts had given her any leads on his whereabouts. He had gone so deep underground, she suspected that any further attempt she made to get to him would yield similar results, except if he chose to get in touch.
She had found out a lot, though, and what she’d found out had stunned her. She had gone to the New York Police Department to place a missing person report and had been further stunned when she was hustled to a private location to meet with the chief of department. She was advised to quit looking.
“Nothing good can come out of this, Ms. Silver,” she’d been told.
A full grown man with no history of disappearing was missing and they were not willing to do anything about it. All her instincts told her that something terrible was going on, but she could not get anything out of them, which had frustrated her.
“You are telling me that a leading citizen of your city suddenly disappears and you can’t do anything about it?” She had been outraged. “His taxes are the reason you get paid, dammit!”
“We are truly sorry, Ms. Silver, but we would strongly advise you to go back home and stop looking,” the man had said with an expressionless face.
“I want to speak to whoever is running this gig.”
“You are speaking to him, ma’am.”
“Don’t you ma’am me! I don’t get it. You are not saying that this is going to be a difficult case, what you are telling me is that you are not willing to lift a finger to find him and that is damn unacceptable.”
“You need to understand, he is an adult and he chose to be unreachable—”
“For over four days?” she heard herself yell. “Four days and no one has heard of or seen him.”
“You are strongly advised to stop looking, for your own good.”
Emily heard the thinly veiled threat and pursed her lips in anger. “I see. I’ll be scheduling a press conference first thing tomorrow. I hope for your sake you have something better to say then,” she’d said and turned to walk away.
“Wait!” She had heard the panic in his voice and halted. “We will look into his disappearance. I’m sure there is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this,” he said, sounding conciliatory.
Emily narrowed her eyes at him and gave him the mean look she had perfected as a drill sergeant. “I will be back and you’d better hope to God that you know nothing about this shit,” had been her parting shot.
She held on to her purse as she walked out of the airport, hoping to get a taxi. Even now, thinking about the less-than-cooperative attitude of the cops in New York fueled her anger. She was standing by the curb when a car pulled up in front of her and the windows came down.
“Hop in!”
It was Ace, one of the special operators at Silver Shield. He was a former SEAL and was also one of her best friends. She had grown close to every single one of her teammates, which was why the last mission had been so hard on her. All her years in the battlefront had not hardened her. She could never get used to seeing her people go down. She sank into the leather interior of his car with a sigh.
“How did you know to come pick me up?” she asked.
“Your mom.”
Emily’s mother was the office administrator for Silver Shield. She made sure the office ran smoothly and everyone was where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there. Her mom drove her crazy most days, but she loved working with her and everyone else at the office absolutely adored her.
“Thanks.”
“Did you find him?”
Ace was the only other person she’d told about her encounter at the park. He had offered to go with her to New York, but she’d declined. She’d needed to do that on her own.
“No trace,” she replied his question.
“What did you find out?”
“He was working on something before he went missing. I have no idea what it was and no one else seems to have an inkling, except that it was top secret.”
She glanced at the mirror as she spoke and saw a black Range Rover. Ace switched lanes, ready to take the next exit. The vehicle also switched lanes.
“Yeah, but that’s not strange. He’s always working on something.”
Wayne Carter was the leading manufacturer of hi-tech security gadgets. He supplied governments and private establishments and had made a name for himself. Each year, he rolled out innovative tech from his top secret lab. The billionaire tycoon was not just a genius when it came to inventing tech gadgets, he was also a maverick of a businessman.
“What is your hypothesis?” Ace took the next exit.
Emily noticed that the black vehicle was still behind them. “I don’t know. What would the Chinese want with him?” She had her suspicions.
“It’s difficult to imagine,” he replied. “We got company.”
Emily shrugged. “Yeah, they’ve been on my tail since yesterday.”
“The Chinese?”
“Strangely, these were Russians.”
“Chinese and Russians…o-kay. Want me to lose your friends over there?”
Emily shrugged. “You could try, but they are going to find me. I have a feeling this has something to do with Wayne’s disappearance. I just wish I knew exactly what he was working on. I have a hunch that information would clue us in.” She braced herself.
Ace suddenly took a sharp turn to the left, then a sharp turn to the right. He circled back through some other streets. After several turns and twists, he took another route that led to the Old Town mansion that was the headquarters of their security firm.
“Let’s meet back here at ten p.m.,” she said, getting out of the car. “And thanks for the ride.”
“Sure thing.”
She watched him zoom off. These days he spent every spare moment he had at home with his beautiful partner. Since they hooked up a year ago, Ace and the very nosy journalist had become inseparable. Emily was happy for them. All her special operators had found love in the past year and it had brought them all closer together. They were a great team any day, but now, they were even better.
As she climbed up the steps to the door that led to her private apartment, her mind went back to the encounter at the park the day before. An entire day had gone by and she had not heard from Wayne. She had no idea where he was or what was going on with him and if the Chinese man, Peng Ho, was to be taken seriously, they had just a little over two days left.
Two days left for what? She still had no idea.
She unlocked her door, going through all
the different security measures they had installed before it clicked open. She entered her apartment, shutting the door behind her. Then turned on the lights and froze.
Chapter Two
Wayne rose from where he had been seated for the past hour. He put away the pistol he’d pulled out when he heard the door open. He saw the exact moment she noticed him. There was no noticeable change in her expression, but the lines on her body became tense. She paused for a brief moment then dropped her phone and keys in the empty fishbowl perched on top of the console table. Next she shrugged out of her jacket, dropping it on the back of a chair as she walked to the home bar at the other end of the living room. The only outward sign of her inner tumult was when she poured out a shot of single malt whiskey and downed it in one go. Then she poured another and drinking slowly, turned to stare at him.
“So…” she said, allowing it to hang there.
He eyed her. So far she hadn’t thrown him out on his ear and was not cussing him out. That had to be a good sign, right? It was always hard to tell with Emily. She was the most unpredictable women he knew.
“You were in New York,” he said, making it a statement and not a question.
“Let me guess, my mother let you in.”
“She’s out with Myles. I don’t think she’s coming back tonight,” he said with a shrug.
Emily narrowed her eyes at him. Her mom had a new boyfriend and she’d been out with him a lot lately. Emily liked Myles and thankfully, he checked out so she was happy for her mom.
“Some funny characters paid me a visit yesterday,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Chinese guys…friends of yours?”
At her words, he felt dread and rage rise up in him. They’d had a deal and part of that deal was that they’d promised to leave her alone.
“What did they want?” he asked her as he walked slowly to where she kept the hard liquor.
“What do you think they wanted?” she fired back.
“They’re hoping I’ll contact you,” he said with a shrug. He snatched the liquor glass from her and downed what was left in the glass.
Silver Shield Security Box Set Page 100
