Zoey’s hands trembled as the adrenaline worked its way out of her system. The residue of fear mixed with the elixir of relief made a sickening sense of nausea rise up from her core. She had nearly pulled the trigger. In fact, it could have been her bullet that had ripped through his skull.
Blood pooled on her mother and father’s Oriental rug. It had been in the family for years and now it was destroyed. The cranberry-colored liquid seeped into the ochre strands as the reality of what she had almost done crept deeper into her core.
She could have been a murderer.
“We have to get out of here,” Eli said. “My truck is just down the road. We can go anywhere you want, but you can’t stay in this house until this thing with Chad is under control.”
Though she heard the words coming out of Eli’s mouth, she couldn’t process them. It was as if he was talking to her through a tin can, the sound ringing and otherworldly.
Her finger twitched as she stared at the man on the floor.
All she had thought about was that if she didn’t pull the trigger Eli was going to die and he would be gone from her life forever.
And yet, she had failed to be brave enough to take the shot. The world started to spin.
Eli moved closer to her, wrapping her in his arms as though he could sense she was about to go down.
“You’re okay. It’s going to be okay,” he said, moving her toward the nearly destroyed couch and making her sit down.
This couch had been all that stood between him and death.
What if she had come downstairs instead of Eli? In the barn, Eli was the only reason that she had even survived. In a sense, he had saved her twice.
It was like they were back in a war zone, except this was the place her family had intended on making their home. Now, BBs were lodged in the couch and there was blood spatter on the wall behind the attacker. Her home had become a death zone.
“Just breathe,” Eli said as another wave of light-headedness came over her.
Her hands were still trembling in her lap and she was shaking her legs, restless.
It was okay. Everything was going to be fine.
Eli was right. She couldn’t deal with the emotions that came with what had just happened. She had to keep moving. If they fell under attack once again, the odds might not play out in their favor.
They had to get the hell out of this shooting gallery.
She stood up. Her knees were weak and threatened to buckle beneath her, but she summoned as much strength as she could to take a step. As she moved, it reminded her of the day she lost the baby, leaving them alone in the world. Here she was again, her world threatening to collapse. The only thing she could do was find the courage to keep moving forward, just as she had done before.
Thankfully, Eli was here. This time, she had to stay. She couldn’t just walk out and deal with this on her own as she had done before. Though things would be different between them, and they weren’t likely to find their way back into a serious relationship, that didn’t mean they couldn’t be each other’s greatest ally.
It took them only a few minutes for her to grab her go-bag and bug out, leaving the dead guy on the floor. No one would find him. She called her brothers as they walked down the road to Eli’s truck. Being in killers’ crosshairs was proving to be much harder than she had ever assumed. If things ever got back to normal, she would never complain about sitting behind a computer again. She would take carpal tunnel over a bullet any day.
Trevor answered his phone on the second ring. “It’s done,” he said, not waiting for her to speak.
“There’s more trash to take out. I left it in the living room for you.” Her footsteps crunched in the fresh snow as she walked to the passenger side of Eli’s Dodge pickup. “I recommend leaving it there for now. It’s too hot in the house for any of us.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line as Trevor must have been deciphering her code. Now more than ever, it seemed that everything in their lives was coming under scrutiny. Nothing they did or said over open communication lines was safe. They were being monitored.
“Understood.”
“We need to enact COBRA,” she said, using the code word for going underground. All their cell phones would be destroyed, along with any other forms of communication technology that could be tracked back to them.
In a sense, they would all be going dark. It was likely what Chad had done and why he had been so impossible to pin down—if he were still alive.
It was what they had all been trained to do in an event like this—stay low, seek shelter.
Unfortunately, with their house no longer available, there were no safe zones. Thankfully, they had protocol for this type of event. Each of them had bags stashed in various locations with devices with state-of-the-art encryption—she had taken care of all the phones and tablets herself.
She grabbed her go-bag and rifled through it. It had everything she needed to get away. As it was, however, they wouldn’t have access to their regular email accounts—they were already known and the information within them lay in the hands of their hunters. And, if they accessed their accounts through their new phones, it would be only a few hours before their locations would once again be known.
They would have to be extremely careful. There were nearly a million ways they could be tracked down if any one of them accidently clicked on the wrong button.
The other end of the line was muffled as Trevor must’ve said something to Jarrod. After a moment, he returned to the phone. “Done.”
“In the meantime, look into our new friend in the government. I will expect to hear from you soon.”
Trevor grunted in acknowledgment on the other end of the line. When the line went dead, she took out the battery from her phone and snapped the SIM card, then threw them all out the window toward the pasture.
When they were well away from the ranch, she would turn on her other equipment, but not yet, not with possible enemies lurking around every corner.
Eli started the truck, letting it roar to life. He kicked up bits of snow and gravel as he took off.
She wasn’t sure whether she should ask him where they were going or just let him lead the way. There was enough information out there that if someone wanted to find her, it may not have taken too much digging. But no one would guess she would leave her heart and safety in the hands of her ex—only a madwoman would do something so stupid...or someone incredibly desperate.
The midday sun bounced off the front window just as they crossed over the Montana-Idaho line. They were stuck behind a line of truckers ascending the pass. There always had to be that one driver who found fault in the others around them and decided to pass the line of cars, only to find that the left lane was snow packed and icy and far more treacherous than they had anticipated. In a way it acted like a metaphor for her life—just when she thought she was ready to take control of the world around her, her hubris caught up with her.
She should never have gone to Billings. Everyone had warned her to stay home and out of the limelight. She had been an idiot and fallen into the trap of complacency. She should’ve known better.
As they crested the hill and made their way deeper into the panhandle of Idaho, she turned on her phone. Eli gave her a glance, like he wasn’t sure whether or not it was safe for her to be doing so.
“Even if people are tracking phones, if they find the signal they won’t think anything of it. This line is assigned to an alias. Even if they take the time to look it up, the findings won’t go anywhere. We are safe, at least for now.” She didn’t tell him the part about how she didn’t dare to delve too deep into the internet.
She wanted to reach out to her brothers to make sure they were okay, and to see where they were headed, but she didn’t dare just yet.
“I’m coming to learn that safe is relative,” Eli said.
“Why would you say that?” She clicked off the screen after making sure the phone was fully charged.
“I shot that man twice, center mass. Nothing happened. He wasn’t wearing standard body armor, but the bullets didn’t penetrate. It was like he was wearing something similar to your dress at the trade show.” Eli gave her an appraising glance like he was questioning her culpability in the attack.
“If you’re implying that I gave this man bulletproof clothing so he could break in, shoot up my house and try to kill us, then you are crazy.” Something like that wouldn’t even make sense. “I thought by now you would know you can trust me, and I thought I could trust you. Let’s not take two steps back. Not now. The only way we are going to make it out of this, or at least the only way I will make it out of this, is if we stick together. Eli, I can’t do this alone.” She could hear the pleading edge to her voice, but as she spoke she didn’t try to muffle it.
“I know.” He sat in silence for a long moment, staring at the road. “I just wanted to make sure that you weren’t somehow involved in this.”
“I know it’s been a long time since we were together, but I’d like to say that I’ve changed for the better.” She felt exhaustion seep into her core at having to fight to prove who she was. “I’m not entirely evil.”
“Well, now I know you’re telling me the truth—you’re still a little bit evil. If you tried to tell me you were a saint...we’d be having a very different conversation,” he said with a laugh. “In fact, that bit of duality is part of the reason I have always thought of you as someone special—you’re not like everyone else. You say what you mean, even if it’s something you know people aren’t going to want to hear, and you are unapologetically yourself.”
She laughed. He hit the nail on the head with that one. Most people wouldn’t consider those strengths, but rather character defects. More than one of her exes had chewed her out for embarrassing them by saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
Luckily, she had never let the criticism of others change her. She was unstoppable. But Eli’s compliments made her uncomfortable, like a jacket that brought her warmth but rested too heavy on her shoulders.
It was easier to shrug off criticism than it was to accept praise.
“You’re only saying that because you saw me in that pink dress,” she teased, hoping to ease some of the pressure. “I saw the way you looked at me up there.”
She could have sworn that she saw a blush rise on his cheeks, but it was something so rare on him that she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t simply a trick of the light.
“Ha! Is that how you respond to a compliment, by searching for another?” he joked. “If that’s what you want, well... I have to admit—”
“Wait,” she said, interrupting him as a thought crossed her mind. “Mindy had her marketing team give samples of our new line to a select group of foreign leaders.”
“Algerian leaders?”
She shrugged. “I have no idea who we ended up sending them to.”
“Looks like we’re going to need to give Mindy a call,” he said as he took the off-ramp at the first exit in Coeur d’Alene.
She moved to make the call, but stopped herself. It was more than likely that there were people out there who were monitoring Mindy’s phone calls. She had to use another number. Using an app, she grabbed a number assigned to a man out of Newark. It would do the trick. If their enemies went digging they would be looking on the other side of the country.
She dialed, hoping Mindy would pick up even though she wouldn’t recognize the man’s name or number.
After a couple of rounds of ring backs of “Woman Up” by Meghan Trainor, Mindy picked up the phone. “Hello, this is Mindy. How can I help you?” she asked, like she was a well-seasoned receptionist instead of the owner of a multimillion-dollar company.
“It’s me,” Zoey said, hoping she would recognize her voice. “Are you holed up?”
She could almost hear the relief in Mindy’s sigh. “Yes, we’re in—”
“Don’t tell me. But you are safe?”
“Yes, I’m with Sabrina. Everything is fine. Are Trevor and Jarrod okay?”
“They’re good,” Zoey said, hoping that she was right. “I’m calling about the samples we sent out for the new Monster Wear. Do you have a list of people we shipped samples to?”
Mindy paused. “I think so.”
“Perfect.” Zoey gave Eli a thumbs-up. For once, the stars were almost aligning.
There was a moment of quiet as Mindy must have been scrolling through her phone. “Okay, it looks like we sent out samples to about thirty heads of state.”
“Did you send any to Algeria?”
Mindy made a noise as though she were sucking on her teeth as she read over her list. “Yeah, looks like we sent three white T-shirts and two pairs of Monster Wear jeans to the prime minister.”
There was no way that the man in the living room was the prime minister of Algeria, that much she knew for sure. “Did you send the white T-shirts to anyone else?”
“Looks like members of the Swedish parliament, but no one else. Why?”
Was someone in the Swedish government coming after them and trying to make it look like it was an Algerian hit? Zoey’s thoughts moved to a few months ago and the nerve agent attack on Jarrod and Mindy.
“Do you still have enemies in Sweden?” Zoey asked.
“No, I don’t think so. We’ve been well received after...well, everything. In fact, most have been apologetic about the whole incident.”
That didn’t mean they were in the clear when it came to Swedish ties, but she had to hope that this case was going to be more cut and dry than the last. “Good, but let me know if you think of anyone or anything that strikes you as odd,” Zoey said, trying to make sense of all the thoughts that were flooding her mind.
“Actually, did you make a wire transfer out of our corporate expense account?” Mindy asked.
“No, why?”
“It looks as though someone transferred $500,226.23 from our account. Do I need to flag it at our bank?” Mindy sounded a bit breathless. “Do you think someone stole it?”
That was a lot of money. And an odd amount. Who transferred twenty-three cents in change? “Have you looked into it at all?”
“Looks like it was transferred to a bank just outside of Barcelona. A town called Sitges. It was processed to be taken out in cash.”
“Do you know who picked it up? Their name?”
“John Smith.” Mindy huffed. “I was hoping you had something to do with it.”
“I’ll take a look at it. For now, have the bank put a hold on all accounts not vital for handling the daily expenses. Only give access to our VP of finance and you and me. We need to stop any leaks before we lose everything.”