Levi
Drew sat in stunned silence the entire way back to her house. I didn’t push her to speak. What was there to say?
I’d called Oscar as soon as we’d left the restaurant, asking him what the hell had happened.
“Man, she gave me the slip. I wasn’t expecting it. I thought I was there to keep people from hurting them, so I never even considered she’d be sneaking off without me.”
“Are you sure? There has to be some other explanation.”
“I’m positive. I saw The Vicar and his goons pull him into the car. She took off running as soon as she saw me.”
“Did you catch her?”
“Aw, man—don’t insult me. Of course I caught her. I brought her back to the house.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes.” I’d ended the call right as we’d reached the car.
Drew gripped my shirt in her hands. “What did he say?”
“Olivia gave him the slip and led Hunter right to The Vicar.”
“No way. There’s no way she’d do that. Olivia loves my little boy like he’s her own.”
I laid my hands over hers. “I know. We’ll get to the bottom of things, okay?”
“Oscar found her?”
I nodded. “She’s at the house. They’re waiting for us.”
“Okay.”
Like a lost puppy, Drew had rounded the jeep back to her side. I’d lifted her in my arms and placed her on the seat, buckling the seatbelt around her. She’d been in shock, terrified, hurting, and there was nothing I could do at that moment to take it all away. It was killing me inside.
When we pulled up the drive to the house, Drew jumped out of the car before I could get the engine turned off. She bounded up the steps and ripped the door open.
“Olivia!” Her voice screamed through the night, a chilling sound—the sound of a broken mother. “Olivia!”
I raced behind her just as Olivia entered the room. Drew flew over, grabbing Olivia by the arms and shaking her. “What did you do? Huh? Tell me! Why? Why? I trusted you! Hunter trusted you!”
Olivia sobbed, her head lolling on her shoulders like a rag doll. She didn’t try to defend herself; she just muttered I’m sorry over and over again, like a spell that perhaps would make it all go away.
Drew released her and fell to the floor on her knees. I pulled her close as she cried, my heart splintering into a thousand pieces. Olivia just stood there, her arms wrapped around herself, continuing to utter the pointless words that wouldn’t change what she’d done.
When Drew was mostly cried out, she looked up. “Why?”
Olivia sucked in a breath. “They threatened to kill my son and daughter-in-law and their unborn baby. I didn’t want to, Drew. I love Hunter like he’s my own, but he’s not mine. It was a terrible choice I had to make, but I couldn’t risk it. The Vicar said he wouldn’t harm Hunter as long as you did as you were told.”
“And you believed him?” Drew stood to her feet, hands on her hips. “He’s a terrorist, Olivia. He wants an antidote for a virus he’s planning to release to kill thousands and thousands of young people. People like your son and daughter-in-law. And now I have no choice but to give it to him so he can sell it to the highest bidder. We’re looking at a global crisis.”
“I didn’t know. But I couldn’t chance that he’d kill my son and my future grandchild. I’m sorry, Drew. I hope you realize you’d do the same in my shoes.”
Drew’s head fell to her hands, and she shook it, as if trying to disperse the thoughts bombarding her. “You’re right. I probably would. Still, I can’t trust you anymore. I’m sorry. You can gather your things and leave.”
“Not so fast.” I stepped in front of Drew. “We’ll need to talk to you about what you saw and how you were contacted. We’re on our way to HQ. We need you to come with us.”
“Am I going to be arrested?” Olivia’s face paled even more than its already deathly pallor.
“We’ll leave that up to the FBI.”
It was a lie, and it was probably a horrible thing to do to the woman. After all, most parents would have done the same thing in her situation. But she’d put Drew and Hunter’s lives in danger with what she’d done, and I felt that a little worry might do her some good.
The tears started up again, and I nodded to Oscar to take her away. I’d have someone clean out her things later before Drew and Hunter returned, and they would return here, happy and whole. If it cost me my life, I’d ensure they’d be just fine.
***
Oscar had notified the team of our arrival, so when we arrived back at Shadow Force, Jolie was waiting for Drew with open arms. She collapsed against Jolie’s shoulder, her own shaking with sobs. Jolie murmured nonsensical musings in her ear and stroked her hair. Finally, Drew pulled away, wiping her face on the sleeve of the soft shirt she’d changed into before we’d left her house.
We’d packed a bag of her things, and she’d checked on the other scientists before they left, leaving one of her employees in charge. I wasn’t sure how long she’d be here, but I was determined to do everything in our power to get Hunter back as soon as possible.
The team was assembled in the conference room when we walked in, and I pulled out a chair for Drew to sit on next to me. That was usually Cade’s spot, but since he was still recovering from being shot a few days ago, I didn’t think he’d need it.
I waited until the chatter died out, although it was far more minimal than usual. Everyone was feeling the loss. We’d all come to adore Hunter Bellamy, and his abduction was hitting us pretty hard.
“Oscar, fill us in on what happened.”
Oscar leaned forward in his seat and cleared his throat. “Everything seemed normal when we arrived at the ice-cream parlor. Kid was eating his ice cream, and they were laughing together.”
I glanced over at Drew and saw her stricken face. It was breaking my heart.
“Then Olivia got a call. She stepped away to take it, so I watched Hunter while she was gone. When she came back, she seemed shaken up. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said yes, but that she’d received some bad news from a friend of hers. I took it at face value.”
Oscar shook his head, as if he was embarrassed that a fifty-something-year-old woman had gotten the better of him.
“They finished their ice cream, and we left the parlor. Olivia said she wanted to walk a little while downtown, so I gave them a little space. There was a group of high school girls heading towards us, and Olivia used them to get away. She crossed traffic, and by the time I was free of the gaggle of hormonal adolescents and across the heavy traffic, Hunter was being pulled into a van, and they took off.”
“Did Olivia say anything to you?”
“Just what she told Drew. The Vicar threatened her son and daughter-in-law and their unborn baby. Said he’d kill them. Told her he wouldn’t harm Hunter as long as Drew did as she was told.”
“I’m assuming he wants the antidote?” Ryder asked, for once not on his computer.
“Yes,” Drew answered, her face stoic and resigned.
“What’s the plan, boss?” Cruz asked steepling his fingers on the table.
“What info do we have on that final bunker?”
Ryder sat forward, punched a few keys and pulled up an image on the screen that he projected behind me large enough for everyone to see.
“It’s remote and out of the way. About two hours outside of town in the middle of nowhere, GA. There isn’t a town anywhere near them. Half an hour away to any real grocery store or restaurant. A couple of mom-and-pop places on the corners near the highway, but otherwise it’s off the beaten path.”
“Any blueprints?”
“Yeah.” Ryder typed on his computer, and a blueprint of the bunker showed up. “This property was sold two and a half years ago.”
“That long? Damn. That means he’s been right here under our noses the whole time.”
“It looks like it. It’s a sure bet he’s been working behind the scenes way longer than we thought, and right here on our own turf.”
“Two and a half years ago. The same timeframe we were created.” Something felt very fishy about the timing. We’d started Shadow Force more than two years ago, almost three. It was created by the president, and our point of contact was his personal advisor. The president had a connection with The Vicar from years past. I did not like where this math was leading.
“What are you thinking?” Oscar asked.
“I don’t know yet. I need to make some calls. Until then, Ryder, keep going.”
Ryder used a laser pointer to indicate the entrances. “There are two stairwells, no elevators.” He changed the photo to a layout of the property. “The outside looks much like an industrial building. But the inside is pretty incredible.”
He switched the picture again, and this time it was a color layout of the first floor.
“There are four apartments, and each of them has its own bathroom. The second floor—or first, depending on how you look at it… the bottom floor, I guess.” Ryder shrugged and changed the picture on the screen. “It has a shared kitchen with two of each appliance—stove, fridge, microwave. There’s a weapons room, a movie theater, a games/media room, a workshop, a guest suite with a bathroom, a large classroom area—the place is massive.”
“Dang, babe. We should look into getting us one of those,” Jolie piped in.
“Sure thing, honey—for the small price of twenty million dollars.”
“Okay. Never mind. Plus, I’d get tired of never seeing the sun.”
Drew stiffened beside me, and I knew she was remembering her days stuck down in that dungeon-like place. At least she’d been taken out to make calls to the patients at different locations, but still, most of her days had been spent in that bunker, and it couldn’t have been easy.
“Best line of attack? Oscar?”
“Are there any blast doors?”
“Yeah—here and here.” Ryder indicated where they were located. “You can only access the second floor from the bottom floor.”
“What if we sealed off the second floor first, then secured the bottom floor? We can set the explosives on the blast doors, go in through the lobby and seal off the stairwell to the second floor. Then we’ll work our way through the bottom floor until all is secured. After we’ve got all the perps tied up, we’ll secure the apartment floor,” Oscar said.
“I think that’s the best course of action.” Oscar wasn’t just good at explosives; he was also a fabulous operator who had a fantastic tactical mind.
“Thankfully the blast doors are far enough away from any of the places Hunter would be, so there should be no risk to his safety,” Oscar added.
“Should be?” Drew’s voice was three octaves higher than normal.
“There won’t be.” I shot Oscar a glare. “We will take every precaution, but the explosives we use will only affect that front room. We know it’s a lobby/security type area, and The Vicar wouldn’t change that feature. There’s an emergency exit here, so we’ll send Johnny’s team down that way and take the first floor from both sides.”
With a plan in place, I turned the attention back to our surveillance of the Triad gangs. “Any news on our nail parlor?”
“It’s been completely quiet until last night. I was able to run the dialogue through a translation site, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense. They’re planning something, and soon. But I can’t figure out who the target is. It’s a surprise attack, but the details were very vague, as if they knew they were being spied on.”
“Okay. Well, let me know if you hear anything else. We want to be as prepared as possible.”
“Ivy just got here. She came to lend a hand. She’s cooking dinner for us all tonight.”
“Thanks, Oscar. You guys are dismissed.”
Drew stood on shaky legs, and I placed my hand on her back, steadying her. She smiled up gratefully as we followed Oscar, Jolie, and Ryder back to the dorm area.
We entered the lobby, and a flicker of reflection caught my eye out the window. I turned to look out the glass-paned front to find a black SUV slowly driving by. They drove a little ways past the gym and then turned back around.
A sense of foreboding hit me just as the windows on the vehicle lowered, almost in slow motion.
“Get down!”
I drove myself hard into Drew’s back, taking her down to the floor. Jolie and the others followed suit just as gunfire rang out in a deafening chorus. The rat-a-tat-tat of automated weapons sang their song of destruction, the glass front of the gym shattering into a billion tiny pieces.
Glass shards rained down on us, slicing into the skin on the backs of my hands, neck, and back. I prayed my body was covering Drew’s enough to keep her free from any injury.
It seemed like hours but was only seconds before tires squealed, and the gunfire stopped. I waited a few seconds before gingerly raising my head and looking around. The front of the gym was in shambles, the desk riddled with holes, the glass completely gone.
“Is everyone all right?” I was afraid to ask, but I needed to know what we were up against.
“We’re good,” Ryder answered, pulling Jolie up to her feet.
Oscar hopped up from behind the desk with more enthusiasm than the situation warranted, crossing his arms over his chest. “Fine here, boss.”
I scanned Drew’s body for any sign of injury, but besides the look of shock she wore on her face, she appeared to be okay.
“Angel, you okay?”
She looked at me as if just then realizing I was standing there. “What? Oh, yes, I’m fine.”
She definitely wasn’t fine. She was in shock. Too much had happened to her in the last few days. It would bring even the most well-trained operator to his knees, and yet, there she stood on her own two feet. Drew was strong and stubborn, and I was falling hopelessly in love with her.
The doors to the offices flew open as well as the door to the dorms. Cruz ran in through one while Ivy rushed through the other, running over broken glass and debris to get to Oscar.
“You guys okay?” Cruz asked, eyeing the cuts on the backs of my hands. I had no idea what my back looked like.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Want me to take a look at those cuts?”
I gave him a quick dip of my head in agreement. “Let’s get everyone to safety. Ryder, check the video cameras. I want to know who that was.”
“Yes, sir—but I have a feeling we already know. Looks to me like we have our answer as to what the Triads were hired to do.”
“Let’s confirm it. Everyone else, into the dorms.”
We filed into the living area, my hand never leaving Drew’s back. I ushered her over to the couch and knelt in front of her. She still had that deer-in-the-headlights look on her face, so I placed my hands on her cheeks and guided her gaze to mine.
“Drew, are you okay?”
She nodded vigorously, but the look in her eyes said she wasn’t at all okay. I pulled her in for a hug, holding her close, stroking her back. When I pulled away, I checked her arms for any cuts or scrapes. “Are you hurt anywhere?”
“No.” She glanced down at my arms, and it was as if a switch flipped. “But you are. Oh, my gosh, Levi. You need to go to the hospital.”
I looked down at the amount of blood on my hands, and agreed that I definitely needed some medical attention, but it wouldn’t be at the hospital.
“Cruz is going to clean me up. I’m good.”
I stood up just as Ryder came through the door with the computer in his hands. “Got the video footage.”
“And?”
“Four guys who fit the description of Triad members. I’ll run them through facial-recognition software and see if we get a solid hit.”
“Sounds good.”
Cruz tapped my shoulder. “I’ve got supplies over here. Let me clean those cuts. And your back looks like sliced ribbons, so I need to see how deep the cuts are.”
As soon as Cruz mentioned my back, a stinging sensation took over. “Okay, I’m coming.”
I glanced over at Drew to find Ivy sitting next to her, talking softly. Ryder had a few cuts, but Jolie was clear, probably since Ryder had covered her during the ordeal. And miraculously, Oscar looked just fine.
“How’d you get off without a scratch?”
“I’m lucky.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“Fine. I ducked behind the desk. The one that looks like Swiss cheese? Probably wasn’t the best place to hide, but somehow the bullets missed me.”
Lucky was right.
Cruz inspected the cuts on my hands, pulling out tiny fragments of glass, but all the ones on my hands and arms were superficial and didn’t require any stitches. When he moved to my back, I got a little more nervous. I wasn’t able to see the damage, obviously, so I had no idea how bad it was. As time went on, the pain had increased.
“You’ve got quite a bit of glass back here, but I don’t think any of these are going to need any stitches. A few butterfly bandages on the larger ones, some antibiotic ointment, and you’ll be fine. It’s gonna hurt like a mother.”
“Hand me that bottle of whiskey.” I motioned to the liquor cabinet, and Oscar jumped to his feet and grabbed it for me. I took a huge swig and put the cap back on. “Okay—might as well get started.”
After an hour of excruciating pain, Cruz was done pulling the pieces of glass out of my back. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending on how one might look at things—I was feeling quite drunk. The whiskey had taken the edge off the pain and my sobriety.
“What are we going to do about the Triads?” Jolie asked, her hands propped on her hips and fire in her eyes.
“Nothing tonight. They’re secondary anyway. That hit was put on us by the Cabs. We’re not wasting our time on the Triads at the moment. We’ll come back to them once this thing is over.”
It would have sounded a lot more authoritative had my S’s not slurred and I hadn’t stumbled over the words. The team erupted into laughter, and I waved them off.
“You need some food,” Ivy announced and bounced up from the couch and into the kitchen to start dinner.
“I’m going to take a shower.”
“You need to make sure you don’t get those cuts wet right now.”
“Dammit, Cruz. You shoulda let me get one first then.”
Yep, I was good and thoroughly wasted.
“I’ll help you.” Drew stood up and took my arm, leading me to my room. The team wooted and whistled, but she didn’t seemed bothered at all by the teasing.
“Sorry ’bout those guys.”
Drew laughed softly. “They’re harmless. They’re just giving us a hard time.”
“Yeah. Good people.”
I sunk to the edge of the bathtub as Drew ran some water. I was already shirtless, so I started unbuttoning my jeans to take them off. Sliding them down my legs, I kicked them across the room. When I started to pull off my boxers, Drew put her hand up.
“Hold your horses there, cowboy! Let me step out.”
“What? Afraid you won’t be able to control yourself?”
She giggled, the sound like a thousand angels singing a heavenly chorus. “Yes, that’s exactly it. I’m afraid I’ll jump your bones.”
“I don’t think that’s such a bad idea.” I reached for her, but she wiggled free, still laughing.
“I’d like for you to remember it in the morning.”
That got my attention real quick. Did that mean she was as taken with me as I was with her? Did that mean that she’d thought about us together?
Drew hovered over the bathtub, turning off the water before standing back up. Her gaze traveled from my face down to my feet and then back up again. Her eyes went wide and her mouth opened in a perfect O. Her tongue peeked out, wetting her lips.
“I, um, well, um.” She sighed and laughed nervously. “Your bath is ready.”
I closed the distance between us, unsteadily I might add, but I wasn’t about to be deterred. My mouth landed on hers with more force than I’d intended. I was about to pull back, afraid that I’d hurt her, when her arms wound around my neck and pulled me closer to her. It was a clash of tongue and teeth and heat. I was acutely aware of how little clothing I had on, and how easy it would be to strip her down and carry her to my bed.
But she was right. I wanted to remember everything about our first time, and being drunk as a skunk wasn’t the time for that.
I forced myself to stop the kiss, to pull away while we still had time.
Drew gazed up at me, her eyes dark with desire, her lips swollen and red from kissing. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.
“I’ll just let you—” She pointed to the bath. “Call me if you need something.”
She disappeared out the door, and I climbed into the bath, sitting up in the shallow, hot water, careful not to wet my wounds—and suddenly thinking a cold shower might have been a better option.