No payment demand or instructions. No proof of life. Whoever’d taken Benning’s son wasn’t following typical patterns for an abduction. Which meant this was more than a simple kidnapping. They wanted to hurt Benning, manipulate him. Or they wanted something from him. The question was why.
Ana scoured the parking lot two more times. A gunman couldn’t fire a shot into a hospital without exposing himself, but there was no movement. Nothing to give her an idea of who’d pulled the trigger, or if they were still out there. She locked her grip around her weapon and turned toward Benning. Either way they were sitting ducks in this room. “Get her out of the bed. We’ve got to move.”
He shook his head. “Olivia’s not going anywhere. She needs rest. Her head—”
“You see these bruises around her wrists? How thin they are?” She closed the distance between her and the side of the bed opposite him. Ana flipped his daughter’s hand over as gently as she could. “There’s not enough skin damage for them to be caused by a rope or handcuffs. These are from zip ties, Benning. Someone bound her wrists while she was in that SUV, and she tried to get free, but she’s not strong enough to get out of them herself.”
He took a step back. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying he let her go.” She steadied her attention on him, tried to keep the warning out of her voice as much as possible. Benning was a smart man, but sometimes the fear of losing a child hazed over a parent’s ability to string reality together. “Whoever took her, whoever took Owen? They wanted Olivia to be found. They wanted you in this room and planted the device we found to ensure you followed whatever instructions they’d given you the first time they contacted you.” She studied his expression for any hint she’d hit the nail on the head, and her heart rate spiked as he flinched against the accusation. She was right, and the phone call he’d received seconds ago confirmed it. The kidnapper had warned him not to involve law enforcement, on threat of harming his son, because they weren’t finished with Benning. “They knew exactly where to find you. Do you really want to put Olivia’s life in more danger by staying here, or do you want to save both your daughter and your son?”
One breath. Two. Benning grabbed the near-empty IV bag, then scooped his daughter gently into his arms. Olivia’s small body fell limp against his muscled chest as she continued to combat whatever sedative her doctors had put in that IV. He rounded the end of the bed, those bright blue eyes settling on her. Warmth shot up her neck and into her face as the veins in his sinewy arms fought to break through skin. He hadn’t changed much over the years since she’d last seen him, but there was a new roughness to him, a strength that hadn’t been there before and she couldn’t look away. “Do whatever it takes to get her out of here. Okay? She’s the only one who matters.”
“I’ll get you both out of here. I give you my word.” The adrenaline rush increased her focus. She’d memorized the layout of the hospital before she’d left Knoxville. There were three exits from the second floor, not including the windows, but they’d take the stairs at the back of the building in case the shooter had stuck around. She headed toward the door and intercepted his path into the hallway. Adjusting her grip on her weapon, she pulled open the door a crack and studied both ends of the hallway. Lucky for them, Olivia’s room was positioned in the corner, the closest to the stairs. Somehow, her kidnapper had gotten access, left the listening device and escaped without notice. Which meant they weren’t dealing with an amateur. “Stay behind me. Use me as a shield if you have to.”
“Okay.” His voice dropped into graveled territory, as though he was fighting to keep the inflection out of his words.
She twisted her chin directly over one shoulder. “As soon as we’re safe, you’re going to tell me why someone would target your kids to get to you and who exactly was on the other end of that phone call.” Because unless he trusted her, his son might not make it home alive.
She moved into the hallway, shouts hiking her nerves into overdrive. The officers assigned to sit on Olivia Reeves until she woke up would’ve heard the gunshot, but she and Benning couldn’t wait around to give their statements. There was no telling how far the abductor would go to ensure they weren’t connected to attempted murder and kidnapping charges. Or how many people they’d hurt along the way. She cleared the hallway, the lights reflecting off the white tile bright. Nodding toward the exit to their left, she maneuvered Benning and Olivia past her. “Stairs.”
She followed close on his heels through the door as uniforms came around the corner down the hall. Carefully closing the stairwell door behind them, they descended the stairs and pushed through the maintenance exit on the first floor until crisp winter air brushed across the exposed skin of her neck. Swinging her weapon up, she swept the parking lot. No movement. Nothing to suggest an ambush, but she wouldn’t let her guard down until Benning and his daughter were safe. “Black SUV five stalls back. Go.”
They crossed the parking lot at a jog, but every cell in her body screamed warning as movement registered off to her left. She had only a moment to react. Ana shoved Benning and Olivia behind the nearest car with everything she had. Gunfire ripped across the asphalt. A bullet cut through the thick fabric of her coat as she fired back at the masked shooter taking cover behind a vehicle two rows over. Once. Twice. Olivia’s scream pierced through the thud of her pulse behind her ears, but Ana couldn’t focus on that right now. Both hands around her weapon, she centered herself behind a parked vehicle between her and the shooter and pulled the trigger three more times, but it was too late. The shooter was already climbing behind the wheel of a black SUV. Maybe even the same vehicle used to abduct Owen and Olivia. In the span of two breaths, he fishtailed out of the parking lot and disappeared down the street.
Hijo de...
“I think it’s safe to say my cover is blown.” Her exhales crystallized in front of her mouth as she turned back toward Benning and his daughter, the girl’s hands locked over her ears. Her fingers tingled with the urge to comfort the six-year-old, but Ana chose to reholster her weapon and positioned her coat over the fresh wound in her side before Olivia saw the blood. The girl had already suffered so much. She didn’t need more material for her nightmares. “Let’s get her in the car. We can’t wait around for the shooter to come back and finish the job.”
Hauling Olivia into his chest, Benning straightened and secured his daughter in the back seat of the SUV. His mountainous shoulders and arms were massive compared to the girl’s small frame as he brushed something from Olivia’s chin, his whisper inaudible to Ana less than two feet away. He was careful of his daughter’s injuries, caring, and Ana fought against the sudden tightness in her throat. There’d been a time she’d imagined him treating their future children’s scrapes and bruises like he’d done with Olivia. Her throat threatened to close, and she turned away from the visual to dislodge the string of thought. She’d buried that future the second she’d snuck out of his room that night.
“Are you okay?” Benning closed the door, his focus on Ana, and her entire body heated as though he’d physically trailed a path down across her clavicle bone. He closed the small distance between them, reaching out, but she dodged his attempt to touch her. His expression fell, his hand falling to his side. “I thought you’d been hit.”
“I’m fine.” Lie. The pain crushed the air from her lungs. She’d most likely need stitches—maybe a surgeon—but she couldn’t worry about that right now. They were vulnerable out here in the open. Targets. Blood trickled into the waistband of her slacks, the ache the only thing keeping her in the moment. He had every reason to hate her for what she’d done, but right now the way he looked at her, as though she were the only woman in the entire world, weighed heavy on her chest.
It’d be so easy to fall back into old habits with him, to remember the way his entire face lit up when she walked into a room, the promises of forever he’d whispered into her ear from between the sheets, how happy they’d been simply curled up in front of the fireplace. It’d be easy to become attached to the man she’d walked away from, but she’d come back to Sevierville for one thing: to find Owen Reeves.
She couldn’t do that without the truth.
Ana clamped her hand to her side, awakening her pain receptors all over again, and wrenched open the driver-side door. Every minute they wasted out here was another minute Owen was in the hands of his kidnapper. She wanted to bring him home. Needed to. “Get in.”
Benning rounded the back of the SUV as she settled into the front and pushed the ignition button to start the engine. The interior filled with his wild, pine-and-dirt scent as he climbed inside, and she breathed a bit deeper, held on to it as much as she could in an attempt to dull the pain in her side. She’d missed that smell, a combination of soap and outdoors. Missed him.
“You can’t go back to your house. The shooter could be waiting for you there.” She maneuvered the SUV out of the hospital parking lot as sirens echoed down the street. The officers who’d been stationed to watch Olivia had called in backup, and while Owen Reeves’s kidnapping fell under federal jurisdiction, they’d need all the help they could get. Ana hit the call button on the steering wheel, the line connecting almost instantly.
“Calling for help already?” JC asked. “This wouldn’t be about Sevierville PD reporting shots fired at LeConte Medical Center, would it?”
“You read my mind. We’ve got an unknown shooter in a black SUV, no plates and local PD closing in on the scene.” She pressed her foot against the accelerator, the weight of Benning’s attention increasing as they sped from the hospital. “Think you could take care of that for me?”
“I live to serve.” JC’s laugh fought to lighten the tension tightening down her back, but Ana had a feeling that as long as Benning was involved, nothing would help. “I checked the traffic cams around the time of the kidnapping. There’s no sign of the getaway vehicle. I’ve got IT working their magic, but someone brought down the cameras beforehand or knew where they were positioned so they could stay clear. We’ve got nothing.”
Which meant the kidnapping had been premeditated. This was the work of a professional.
Benning ran one hand through his hair, leveraging his elbow on the passenger-side door. Frustration played clearly across his expression, and in that moment her instincts said there was more to this investigation than a simple kidnapping.
“Thanks, JC. Sevierville PD is about to bag a listening device I found attached to the back of the girl’s hospital bed. I need you to see if you can trace it back to its owner. Call me if you find something.” She ended the call, checked the rearview mirror for any vehicles behind them, then slammed her foot against the brakes. The seat belt pressed into her chest as her body weight shifted forward from momentum.
“What are you doing?” Benning straightened, braced against the dashboard. Pushing his dark, shoulder-length hair behind one ear, he turned on her. “The shooter could be following us.”
“You brought me into this investigation by requesting me specifically, but I can’t do my job if you’re keeping information from me. I think now’s a good time to tell me who took your son, don’t you?” Heated rubber filled her lungs, clearing his scent from her system. She faced him. “The kidnapper contacted you before that call in the hospital, didn’t he? He warned you not to involve the police, so you thought if you reached out to a former acquaintance who happened to be an FBI agent, he wouldn’t know. The listening device, the rifle shot through the window... This guy is a professional, Benning, and he has targeted you. What does he want?”
He stared out the windshield. Seconds ticked by, a minute. Pressure built behind her sternum the longer he took to answer, but when he turned that bright blue gaze to hers, her gut said she wasn’t going to like the next words out of his mouth. “He wants the skull I found.”
“A HUMAN SKULL?” she asked.
Snowflakes drifted across the windshield. January temperatures tunneled through his shirt, but the memories of what he’d found—evidence of what a killer had done—generated enough heat to haunt him for the rest of his life. Someone had kidnapped his twins and taken a shot at Ana through the window of his daughter’s hospital room. Because of him. He couldn’t keep the truth to himself any longer. “A woman approached me two weeks ago on the site of one of the buildings I was inspecting. She offered me fifty thousand dollars to give a residential project the go-ahead, but the crew had cut too many corners. There were sections of framing missing. The plumbing wasn’t up to code.” Benning smoothed his palms down his jeans, blood crusted on the underside of his fingers. Olivia’s. Glancing toward his daughter in the back seat, he studied the perfect curve of her mouth as she slept—anything to distract him from the fact he’d almost lost her less than six hours ago. And that her brother had been taken. “I couldn’t ignore any of that, so I said no. Told her I suggested she hire a new crew to do the job right before the city came in with a lawsuit.”
Ana’s uniquely enthralling eyes—the ones he’d dreamed about for years—softened. “What happened after you gave her your answer?”
“I couldn’t get past the thought that she’d bribed inspectors before. She seemed...comfortable with the approach, so I started looking into the company’s past projects.” He shook his head. “I found settlement paperwork between Britland Construction and tenants who’d been injured or left homeless because their buildings weren’t up to code. Years’ worth, with millions of dollars at stake, but the problems were only getting worse, and somehow their projects kept getting approved by the city. I wanted to know why.”
“You started investigating on your own.” Ana leaned back in her seat, her expression smooth. How was that possible? How could she pretend nothing had happened between them—that she hadn’t torn his life apart—and keep herself so...detached?
“I went to the police. They brought the woman in for questioning, but there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Britland had sent her to bribe me. Her lawyer threw around so much weight, the investigating officers couldn’t even verify she worked for them. Dozens of families were being hurt every year because of this company’s negligence and greed, and I couldn’t let them get away with it. I’m the only inspector the city has, so when Britland needed another project across town inspected, I added the job to my afterhours schedule last night. I ripped open one of the main walls to check the electrical.” He dug his phone out from his pocket and swiped to a photo he’d hidden in the cloud. “That’s when I found this.”
Ana took the phone from him, her fingers brushing against his, and everything inside him fired in a heated chain reaction. She’d always had that effect on him; had always been able to take total control of his body with a single touch, but despite the fact he’d been the one to bring her back into his life, he couldn’t give in to those feelings now. Now he had to get his family back. That was all that mattered. “That’s most definitely a skull.” She brought the screen closer to her face. “We won’t be able to narrow time or cause of death without my forensics team getting their hands on it, but that hole in the frontal bone looks like a gunshot wound.”
He’d thought so, too.
“I called the police as soon as I found it, but before my call connected, someone shouted at me from behind. I turned around to find a gun and a flashlight pointed at my face. I thought the guy was site security, so I explained who I was, and why I was there and offered to show my work order, but when my eyes adjusted, I noticed the ski mask.” His heart rate picked up as a fresh wave of adrenaline dumped into his veins. “He said he’d wished I hadn’t found the skull, and that he was sorry. He had his finger on the trigger, and I knew then he was going to shoot me for what I’d seen, but then an actual security guard ordered him to lower his weapon. The shooting started, and I just grabbed the skull and ran.”
“You said he was wearing a mask. Did you pick up on any other characteristics? Anything we can use to identify him?” she said. “An accent, tattoos, scars, clothing, the color of his eyes?”
“No, none of that.” He shook his head.
She handed the phone back, seemingly determined to avoid physical contact this time. “Where’s the skull now?”
“Safe.” He hit the sleep button on the side of his phone. “At first, I didn’t think Britland could be responsible. It’d be too obvious. There was a paper trail linking the payoffs to the victims, and the skull I found had been drywalled inside their own building, but as soon as I left the site, I knew I couldn’t go home. At least not right away, in case the guy in the mask decided to follow me.” Rage burned through him. He should’ve been more careful. Should’ve taken the skull straight to the police. He cleared his throat as his eyes burned. “My nanny—Jo West—was supposed to drop the kids off for a sleepover at a friend’s house, but she called me saying Owen had been sick for the past few hours, and he wanted me to come home.” Now his nanny was missing. “When I got to my house, I hid the skull in an old, unfinished brick fireplace my dad had started building when I was a kid, but when I got inside the bastard was already in my house. I fought him off as long as I could, but I couldn’t stop him. He hit me from behind almost the second I walked through the front door. When I woke up, my phone was vibrating in my pocket, the house was quiet and Jo and the kids... They were gone.”
Now the SOB had his son.
“He warned me if I involved the FBI or police, I’d never see my kids again, said I had twenty-four hours to turn over the skull before he’d start hurting them.” He hadn’t been fast enough, strong enough. But with the evidence he’d recovered, he was going to expose them all. He’d make sure they never hurt his family again, never hurt anyone’s family again. “I know what I’m asking you to do, Ana. I know you don’t want to be here, but these people went after my family. You’re the only one who can help me find my son before it’s too late.”
Pain throbbed at the base of his head in rhythm with his racing heart rate.
“Then it’s a good thing I came into town for my parents’ surprise wedding anniversary.” The hardened exterior she’d hidden behind the moment she’d stepped into his daughter’s hospital room cracked as one corner of her mouth lifted into a smile. She put the SUV back in gear and pulled into traffic. “There’s a safe house the FBI has secured outside of town. You and Olivia can stay there while I collect your bodiless friend from the fireplace. After that, our forensics unit can run dental and DNA for an identification and hopefully trace the victim back to the kidnapper. If he wants the evidence so badly, there’s a reason. I’m going to find out what that reason is so we can get your son back.”
Water and snow kicked up alongside the SUV as they headed out of the city, Main Street passing in a blur. In this quiet, Smokey Mountain town of less than 20,000 residents, there wasn’t much in the way of scandal and crime, but when it hit, it hit hard and left a wake of grief behind. Plowed streets disappeared under a new layer of snow, the trees growing thicker as they headed southeast along the highway. Oliva’s soft snores and the high-pitched clearing of slush beneath the tires coaxed him to relax, but he couldn’t ignore the strained silence between him and the woman who’d amazingly put herself in harm’s way for his daughter. “Thank you for taking the case. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“No need to thank me.” Thin lines around her eyes deepened as though she was in the middle of an internal battle of some kind. “This is my job. This is what I’m trained for.”
Was that all this was to her? A job? His gut clenched. He should’ve known better; should’ve realized reaching out to her wasn’t going to change anything. He should’ve had enough sense to let the past die, but he hadn’t been able to stop the loop of what-ifs since that morning he’d woken alone in his bed. Until he caught sight of the stain of blood pooling on her slacks. Benning jerked forward in his seat. Hell. She’d gotten shot, her wound had been bleeding this entire time and she’d kept it to herself. “Damn it, Ana, you’re hurt. Pull over.”
“I said I’m fine. It’s been six hours since your son was taken. If we get stuck out here, we’re not finding Owen before the deadline.” The muscles along her throat worked to swallow. Her left arm hung limp at her side, her free hand gripped so tight around the steering wheel her knuckles threatened to split the translucent skin. “Besides, I’ve survived a lot worse than a bullet wound. Tell me about Owen.”
A lot worse? What the hell did that mean?
Hesitation gripped him hard, but he couldn’t argue with her logic. Every minute they were on the run was another minute his son didn’t have. “He hates peanut butter. Won’t go near the stuff. All he wants to do is sit on his tablet and watch those stupid videos online of other kids playing with toys, but I let him because it makes him happy.” Adrenaline from the shootout at the hospital drained from his veins the longer he talked about Owen. “The kid can’t go anywhere without the blanket I bought for him while Lilly was pregnant with them. Sleeps with it every night, takes it with him wherever he goes. Except school. That’s where I had to draw the line.”
That damn blanket was still right where Owen had left it in the middle of the living room floor during the abduction. His son must’ve dropped it when the kidnapper had rushed him out the door. Only now Benning wished he would’ve brought it with him, had something to hold on to of his son’s. A minute passed, maybe more.
“I’m sorry about Lilly. I wanted to...reach out, but I wasn’t sure after what’d happened between us...” She cleared her throat, redirected her attention out the driver-side window. “Has it been hard? Not having her around?”
He let her words settle, focusing on the topic of his late wife.
“At first.” He couldn’t really remember single moments of the first few months of the twins’ lives. It’d been a blur of diaper changes and spit up, of having to take a leave of absence until he’d found the right nanny to take over, of trying to make sense of being a single father. Of trying to forget about the rookie federal agent who’d extracted herself from his life as quickly as she’d appeared. He studied the snow as it melted against the hood of the SUV. “My entire world got turned upside down. I had to start thinking of things like formula temperature, not being able to sleep for more than an hour at a time and which diapers worked better for girls compared to boys. To be honest, I still don’t know what I’m doing or if I’m making the right choices for them.” He scratched at the spot of dried mud on his jeans as heat flared into his neck and face. “Guess I should be grateful I got to do any of that stuff... Lilly didn’t.”
“I’m sorry.” Sincerity laced her words. “I didn’t mean—”
“No, it’s okay.” He’d healed from that wound a long time ago. “Lilly and I both knew what we were getting ourselves into, and we’d both accepted the possibility that we might not be able to make it work. We agreed what’d happened between us was a mistake, but I can’t say I regret what came out of it. I wouldn’t have Owen or Olivia if it wasn’t for her.” He twisted toward Olivia. “What about you? Got someone waiting for you when you head back to Knoxville?”
The idea she’d found happiness with another man—someone other than him—built pressure behind his sternum, which didn’t make sense. She’d been the one to drive the wedge between them. What she did with her life after that shouldn’t have even crossed his mind, but there she’d been, always emerging when he failed to distract himself or had a few minutes alone.
“No. The cases I work, the things I’ve seen...” Ana shifted in her seat, flinched against an invisible pain he couldn’t see. She slowed the SUV on approach to one of the side roads off the highway up ahead. She turned that hazel gaze onto him for a moment as she maneuvered the vehicle up the long, winding drive to a cabin set a little less than an eighth of a mile back on the property. In an instant he was the man completely smitten with the rookie fresh from Quantico who’d been working her first missing persons case in Sevierville. “It’s impossible to find the light when I have to spend all my time walking through the dark.”