“Don’t even think about it.” The cold voice stopped her thoughts. “If you try anything, I will pull the trigger.”
And she believed him.
“Fine. Could you at least tell me what you want?”
“Wayne Carter.”
“What? Why?” They wanted Wayne? Whatever for?
“We have old scores to settle,” came the terse reply.
“So why are you involving me in this? You do know that we are divorced, don’t you? He’s not going to come for me.”
Why did people constantly think they could get to Wayne through her? They had called it quits several years ago. It had been on the news and everything, so the chances that whoever this kidnapper was, he was unaware of that tiny fact, was quite slim.
“Oh, he’ll come alright. He’ll definitely come,” came the satisfied reply.
Whatever. If he chose to believe that, it was his problem. But… “Where’s my daughter?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That might be, but are you willing to take the risk?”
Emily did not know what to do. She needed to know that her daughter was safe, then she could handle the clown in the back seat. But what if she took the chance and he really did have her daughter? What then? She would not be able to live with herself knowing that harm had come to Kendra because of her. She needed to play along with the fool until she got more information.
“Fine. What do you want me to do?”
“There’s a landing strip a few miles from here. I want you to drive there.”
So this was an abduction. Emily glanced at the slim gold watch she had on her wrist and cursed inwardly. She had given her wrist device to Kendra, but she could have asked for another one. They always carried a few extra with them on missions. The only way she had of contacting her crew was through her phone. She had to look for a way to get to the phone before she boarded any plane.
“I’ll take that,” a hand reached out and grabbed her purse.
“Hey! That’s mine.”
“Don’t worry, I just need to get your cellphone out. You can have the purse back.” Even as he spoke, the purse was thrown back. It landed on the passenger’s seat and bounced onto the floor.
Emily pursed her lips. So much for calling for backup. She would have to find another way to communicate with her team. She had to be very careful because of Kendra. If they really had her daughter, then she could not make any moves that would place her life in danger.
“Since you have me, why don’t you let my daughter go?”
The man laughed then.
“For a smart woman, you can ask some really dumb questions, Emily.”
“So you’ll let her go?” She was not concerned about the insult. She needed to know what was going on in his head and what angle she could use.
“Do you think we’re fools? If we let your daughter go then we’ve got nothing on you.”
“I thought it’s Wayne you wanted? You’ve got me, haven’t you?”
“You two are divorced as you’ve so kindly pointed out. There’s no guarantee he will come for you.”
Emily nodded.
He did not know it yet, but she knew that Wayne would move heaven and earth to get her safe. Right then, the question she’d wrestled with just a few moments ago was settled. She loved Wayne and would do anything to keep him safe. But more than that, she knew without an iota of doubt that he felt the same way about her.
Her abductor did not know it yet, but he had just bought a truckload of trouble.
Chapter Sixteen
Monday, 9:55 a.m., Washington D.C.
“What the hell is this? How the hell do two people disappear under your watch?” Wayne was furious. He wanted to hit something…to slam his fists into something hard. He paced back and forth in front of the house in the quiet neighborhood, somewhere in D.C.
“Emily left for Arlington with instructions to take Kendra on to Chicago,” Ace said, looking pale.
Wayne froze. Arlington? “Did she say why she was going there?”
“No,” Ace replied.
He switched his gaze between both men standing before him. Ace looked confused and shaken, two words he would not previously have associated with the large man standing before him. Drew just looked grim. He hadn’t said a word since they arrived five minutes ago with the news that both Emily and Kendra had disappeared. From right beneath their noses, dammit!
It was frustrating as hell. But beyond that, it was scary.
“What about Kendra?”
“She asked to use the bathroom just before we left,” Ace said. He had a bewildered look on his face. “When we didn’t see her after a few minutes, we went in, but she wasn’t there.”
Damn.
“But the wrist device…she had Emily’s device right…we can track that?” He knew he was clutching at straws, but he was desperate. He could not lose his family once again. He just couldn’t.
Ace held out his hand with what looked like a hi-tech sports wristwatch.
“This was left behind with this note.” He passed the note on to Wayne.
Wayne took the piece of paper from Ace’s hand. It was folded in two. Opening it, he stared at the message written by his daughter. The writing was neat and orderly, giving him the impression that the teen was not one to act recklessly. His eyes moved over the paper. The message was simple enough…
I’ve gone after my mom. Sorry.
And that was it.
So she’d followed her mother to Arlington.
Why?
He lifted his eyes from the piece of paper to find both men watching him.
“Do you have any idea why she went to Arlington?” Drew spoke for the first time.
Wayne pinched the bridge of his nose as he considered how to answer the question. He was angry and a good part of his anger was directed at both men standing before him. They were supposed to watch his family and they’d bungled it. He knew it was not completely their fault. Emily was their boss and when she gave an order, they had no choice but to obey. As for Kendra, she had learned how to look out for herself somehow.
But something was very wrong.
There were several reasons why Emily might go to Arlington. But he could think of only one.
“I might have an idea.”
He dropped his hand and pulled out his cellphone. He felt acid build in his stomach as he thought about the phone call he was about to make. He placed a call to the number that was on speed dial. The phone had barely rung when it was picked up.
“Speak.”
“Where’s Emily?” Wayne asked cutting to the chase.
There was a slight pause. “She left here a while ago.”
“What did you tell her?”
“What is this about, Wayne?”
“Why don’t you tell me, General?”
“I don’t like your tone.”
“And I don’t give a shit! I want to know what you’ve done to my wife.” He was not in the mood for bullshit.
“Look, boy, your wife was here this morning. But she left almost an hour ago. That’s all I can tell you.”
“I don’t believe you.”
He was still seething from the information he’d extracted from the woman he’d shot the day before, Jade Han.
“What the hell are you insinuating?” came the sharp reply.
“That you are the sort of man who stoops to unethical means to get his way? If that’s what you think I was trying to say, then you’re damn right.”
“Dammit, boy, get off your fucking high horse.”
“Where is my wife?” He was not going to ask again.
“Ex-wife, and I have no idea where she is.”
There was something in his voice that made Wayne believe the old man was telling the truth. He really did not know where Emily was. He was wasting his time here.
“Fine.”
Wayne was about to disconnect the call when the general spoke aga
in.
“Your daughter, on the other hand, would make a damn fine intelligence person.”
Wayne froze.
“Kendra is with you?”
“Oh no. She slipped in almost after her mother left and did not stay long.”
So both Emily and Kendra had been at the Pentagon just that morning. Wayne decided that he would begin his search from there.
“Okay.” Without another word, he ended the call. “They were both at Arlington,” he said to the two men standing in front of him.
Just then their phones beeped. Ace and Drew glanced down.
“Emily’s phone was turned off somewhere between Arlington and D.C.,” Ace said, reading something on his phone. “Rusty has been able to trace the signal, but it seems to be moving rather quickly across state lines.”
“How quickly?” Wayne asked.
“Several hundred miles per hour. Definitely a plane.”
This was worse than he thought. Could Emily have been abducted? It didn’t seem likely. However, if she had not been forcefully taken, she would have gotten in touch with her team by now.
He had no idea if Kendra was with her. There was no doubt that she had followed her mother to General Carter, but what happened to her, to them both, thereafter was the mystery.
Wayne’s phone rang. There was no caller ID. After a brief hesitation, he answered the call and brought the phone to his ears.
“Yes?”
“We have your wife and daughter. Now you are going to listen closely and do exactly as we say.”
**
1:00 p.m., New York City
He walked through the debris of what used to be his secret lab. It was located beneath a building a few streets away from his office. The explosion that had rocked the place and killed his assistants had left its mark.
One of the men with him whistled.
“How did you survive this?” Ace asked.
Wayne shrugged in reply. He had no idea how he had escaped the effect of the blast, but somehow he’d gotten away with just a few scratches.
“Whoever did this must have been an insider,” Drew observed.
Wayne glanced at the destroyed equipment, the upended furniture and the places that had been affected by the fire. It would cost him several million dollars to replace everything in there.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he said, agreeing with Drew. But he could not think of who the person could be. There had been three assistants working closely with him as well as one other robotics engineer. The engineer had been on vacation when it happened and all the assistants had died in the explosion.
He pulled himself together and walked past the destruction to another end of the lab. He walked through a door, then using both fingerprint and retinal scanning, he activated the panel behind the doors.
“Step in, gentlemen,” he said, gesturing to what looked like a really wide closet.
Ace and Drew exchanged glances, then walked towards him and got into the closet with him. As the panels slid shut leaving them in sudden darkness, he got the feeling that they did not completely trust him. There was a grim smile on his face as the closet began to move downward like an elevator. He didn’t really care whether they trusted him or not. He just needed them on his side long enough to get Emily and Kendra.
The darkness lasted only a few seconds before the lights came on. They found themselves on a platform with protective railings that was gently being lowered to what appeared to be another secret lab.
“How many layers of this do you have?” Ace asked.
“If I tell you, I’d have to kill you,” Wayne said, only partially joking.
The platform stopped at ground level and they all stepped out. This area had not been affected by the blast. He led the way past the lab to another panel like the one above. After going through the security check, the panels slid open and they stepped into an office.
Without a word he walked to the large table that occupied a good portion of the room then quickly typed in a code by the side of the table. A drawer slid open and he picked up a device that looked remarkably like a handgun. He turned and pointed it at both men.
They gazed at him in surprise, then very slowly, their hands went up.
“What the hell is this about, man?” Ace asked.
“Relax. It’s not a firearm. I just need to ensure that none of us are bugged,” Wayne said dryly.
Then he pointed the device at himself and scanned his body from head to toe. If he had accidentally swallowed a tracking device, it would detect it. The light on the body of the device turned green. Indicating that he had not been bugged. He repeated the same process on both men and when he was satisfied that they had not been tracked to his lab, he turned it off and flung it on his table. It was one of several little devices that had been designed and created by his company.
“Wanna tell us why we’re here now?”
Wayne glanced at Drew, but instead of replying his question, he walked to one of the walls of the lab. To anyone else, it looked like a plain wall. The plaster was smooth and evened out and there was nothing suspicious about the wall. However, Wayne moved his fingers over a part of the wall, much in the same way a person would move their fingers over a keyboard. When he pressed the last invisible key, a small panel shot out of the wall. Very carefully, he picked up two tiny, flat objects and then pushed the panel back into the wall so that it was once again a seamless, plaster like barrier.
“This is why we’re here,” he said, walking back to both men.
“Microchips?” Drew asked, raising his left brow in inquiry.
“A microchip.”
“This is what they’re asking for in exchange for Emily and Kendra?” He could tell that Ace was slightly confused.
“Yeah.”
“I don’t get it.”
Wayne sighed and walked towards the table. He touched a sensor button and a screen slid up from the middle of the table.
“The prototype cannot function without these.”
“So these people, whoever they are, have the prototype as well as Emily and Kendra,” Ace said.
“How many people know about the microchip?” Drew asked.
“My assistants, the engineer that worked for me. That’s about it.”
“So it’s either they told someone else about it or the person behind this is the engineer.”
“Or not all the assistants died in the blast,” Ace added.
Wayne swung his gaze to the man who was looking thoughtfully at the floor.
“Why do you say that?”
“It just seems logical,” Ace said with a shrug.
“You might be right,” Wayne said, nodding once. “Only one body was retrieved. Then we found bits of DNA from the other two. One of those was a tooth.”
“No matter who they are, we need to find a way of tracking them down,” Drew stated.
“The exchange is supposed to be for this evening,” Wayne said, walking around the table. He held out a chip to each man standing before him. “We are not waiting for this evening, however. We are going to pay them a visit.”
Drew glanced at the chip in his hand. “What do you want us to do with this?”
“I want you to keep it safe. If I’m taken, they are going to assume that it’s on me.”
“How do you know where they’re being held?” Ace asked.
Wayne walked back to the table and turned on the screen. He typed in some numbers and a large map appeared on the screen.
“Over here,” he called to the guys.
They walked over to where he was and peered at the screen.
A red dot appeared and he pointed to it. “That red dot is the exact location of the prototype.”
“If we find the prototype, we’ll find the girls,” Ace surmised.
“Yeah.”
“But how do we know for sure that they’re in the same place?” Drew asked, turning to look at Wayne.
It was a question he could not answer. He had a hunch
that his wife and daughter were at the same location as the prototype, but he did not know for sure. What if he was wrong? They didn’t have a lot of time. If they got there and his family was not there, he would get the prototype but then, he would have placed their lives in danger.
He ran a hand over his head and down his face as he ran the possibilities through his mind. He didn’t have a choice though. He was not going to give the microchips to the kidnappers, whoever they were. Moreover, there was no guarantee that they would let Emily and Kendra go once they got what they were asking for. No. This was the only way. It was risky, but he did not feel like he had any other choice.
Meeting Drew’s gaze, he tried to convey his thoughts without words. He saw understanding in the other man’s eyes and sighed.
“We have to take the risk,” he finally said.
Drew nodded. “I’m in.”
“So am I,” Ace added.
Wayne understood that for this mission, both men had just agreed to take orders from him. They were going in blindly, more or less. But they were going to give it all they had. He let his gratitude show then hard determination slowly stole over him.
He nodded once in gratitude.
“Can Rosabelle get into this computer?”
“Yeah,” Drew said.
“Get him on. I’m going to give him access to this system and I want him to get us into the video feed of this location, if they have one.”
“On it.” Drew pulled out his phone and got to work.
“Ace, can you come up with a rundown of the equipment we’ll need for this, including firearms?” He lifted his head from the screen to cast a brief glance at the man in question.
Ace nodded and pulled out a phone. Wayne raised an eyebrow in inquiry.
“Emily had Rusty create a function in our app that helps us run through different possible scenarios and the equipment that might be needed.”
That was smart. But then, Emily was a master strategist. He nodded and went back to the screen. They had very little time to get everything ready, but they could not afford to delay. He was going to get his wife and kid back.
**
“Hey Simeon,” Jasmine said, walking up to him as he got into the living room.
“Hi, what’s up?” Simeon said, staring into his phone.
Silver Shield Security Box Set Page 114
