Jacko was dressing too, putting the clothes he’d been wearing back on. Lauren deliberately didn’t look at him because, well...a naked Jacko was a sight, and seeing him cover up was a real shame.
He pulled up his jeans and she winced because he went commando. But he zipped up decisively without catching one hair, which showed real dexterity.
“How’d he get your number?” He pulled his long-sleeved black tee back on. Jacko never seemed to feel the cold.
Lauren applied fresh lipstick, combed her hair. Ideally she would have showered but there was no time. There’d be time after, though. Hmm. It was early evening. She had the makings of sandwiches and there were still a few beers in the fridge. Maybe they could watch TV once this man had left. Sandwiches on the coffee table, a nice action flick...
She hugged herself secretly. God, she thought that kind of thing had gone from her life forever. Such a simple thing really—watching TV on the couch with Jacko, laughing, munching. So simple, yet it seemed like heaven to her. Jacko would have some quirky take on the plot. He’d probably critique the weaponry.
“Lauren.” Jacko’s voice had gone deadly quiet.
“Hmm?”
“How’d this guy get your number?” He stood stock still in her bedroom, glaring fiercely at her.
“Oh, Suzanne gave it to him. What are you doing?”
He had his cell out, clicked a number on speed dial. “Checking.” She could hear the voice mail message across the room. Instantly, Jacko dialed another number, probably John. Voice mail.
“Wait.” Lauren laid a hand on his forearm. She could practically hear his muscles quivering. “They were going to some theater thing this evening. Suzanne designed the lobby of the theater. I remember John grumbling about going. I think he has a limit of one cultural event per month and Inside/Out was it, so he’s pissed. But don’t worry. Andrews had an appointment with Suzanne, and she knew she could give my number out.”
Jacko’s jaw muscles jumped as he sat down on the bed to put his boots back on.
Start as you mean to go on.
Lauren sat quietly on the bed beside him, a hand on his massive shoulder. Oh man, touching him was fantastic. It made her feel safe and excited all at once.
“Jacko.” She stared at him as he kept his face stubbornly in profile, not looking at her. His vibe was strange. Not anger. Could it be—did Jacko do anxiety? “I understand what you feel, believe me I do. But I need—I really, really need—to put this behind me and start living a normal life. I love designing book covers but it’s indoor work. I really enjoyed creating those renderings of Suzanne’s designs. I think it might be a lucrative sideline. I think this man is going to offer me a contract. And more might follow.” She swallowed. The next words hurt, because they expressed a wish, and it had been two long years in which she had never dared to think of anything beyond survival. No desires allowed, just getting from one day to the next. “I want this. Very much.”
He’d finished lacing up his boots and his head hung down as he stared at his knees. A heavy sigh. “Okay.” His deep voice was quiet.
Her doorbell rang. She sat and looked at him for a long moment. He looked sideways at her without lifting his head.
“Doorbell.”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
“You should—you should get it.”
A rush of joy pulsed through her. It was going to be okay. “Yes. Yes, I will.”
New Jacko followed her out her bedroom door. It was going to take a while to train him not to be paranoid all the time, just some of the time, but she was hopeful. She texted Suzanne—your three o’clock wants artwork—and sent it as she walked to the door.
Jacko had installed a video intercom for her. She saw a perfectly innocuous man on the screen. Pale, looking cold and anxious. Well, he said he had a plane to catch.
She switched on the speaker. “Yes?”
He turned eagerly to the speaker grill. “Ms. Dare? My name is Paul Andrews? Suzanne Huntington gave me your name and cell phone number? I’m here to speak briefly about a commission?”
Each sentence was couched as a question. Face scrunched with anxiety.
Lauren swung wide the front door, Jacko right behind her. “How do you do, Mr.—” she began.
He stepped smartly into the room, took a gun out of his pocket, aimed at Jacko and shot twice. Jacko fell heavily to the ground.
Lauren stood still, too shocked to move.
The man pivoted to her. She saw the syringe too late. Something stabbed deeply and painfully into her neck and she simply switched off.
Chapter Twelve
Frederick wondered whether the thug was dead. Should he should bend down, touch two fingers to the side of the neck, find out? But he didn’t want to touch the man, and he especially didn’t want to get his shoes dirty with the blood spreading out from under this Morton Jackman.
It was imperative to get Anne Lowell out of the house and on their way to the airport. Time was pressing. It would be disastrous to be stuck all night at the airport with a kidnapping victim. Of course, Frederick would keep her under, but still. It was one thing to have a hidden briefcase, quite another to have an abducted woman on the plane. Plus, he’d promised his anonymous benefactor a living, breathing—but no one said anything about conscious—Anne Lowell by early tomorrow morning, and he had every intention of keeping his promise.
The man sounded like a good client. There might be more work coming from that quarter. A successful professional cultivates his clientele.
Frederick looked around, wondering what clues he was leaving. He hadn’t touched the door and he was wearing latex gloves anyway. He’d made sure to keep his hands out of the reach of the intercom camera.
He had the gun and he had the syringe. Something white was in her hand. Cell phone. He nudged it away from her hand with his shoe and stamped on it heavily, repeatedly until nothing usable was left. If anyone was looking for her, there’d be no cell signal at all to follow. He’d used an untraceable cell to call her but better safe than sorry. He’d get rid of his cell and his shoes as fast as possible.
He bent down. Lifting a woman who was deadweight from the ground was not easy, even though Anne Lowell was slender. Though he hated to admit it, Frederick’s knees were not what they once were. When he lifted the woman in his arms, he staggered. Carrying her in his arms as he would a child was not going to be feasible, not with the snow and ice outside. He shifted her torso, placing her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
Excellent. That worked.
Frederick stood unsteadily, looking down at the thug. The thug had dark skin, but was turning dusky pale from blood loss. His lips were turning white. If he wasn’t dead, he would be soon.
Had the bullets gone clear through or were they still in Jackman’s body? It didn’t really make any difference. Even if they had gone through he didn’t have time to look for them, and if they were still inside he definitely didn’t have time to probe.
The gun had been “cold” anyway. Untraceable. He hadn’t handled the bullets in any way; the gun was preloaded. He’d had an extra magazine, just in case. He hadn’t expected a gun fight, which he knew he’d lose. He was a thinker not a shooter. He had to catch this Jackman totally by surprise—and he had.
All his meticulous planning had paid off. In one twenty-four-hour period, he’d discovered Anne Lowell’s new identity, tracked her down, eliminated her protection and was bringing her back to his new employer.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
He’d probably have to sacrifice Paul Andrews and that was a pity. Eggs and omelets.
It had turned sleety outside. It was hard to walk in the icy snow with a full-grown woman on his shoulder. Hauling a woman over a shoulder in the open where anyone could see him was dangerous, but he took his time. A slip would be disastrous. And the weather was keeping everyone indoors. Not a car had passed since he’d parked at the curb.
He reached the rental, bent at the knees and put her in
the front passenger seat. He’d thought of and discarded the idea of placing her lying down on the backseat. On the one hand, she’d be out of sight. On the other, if by some wild and disastrous chance he was pulled over, a passed-out woman buckled in next to him was easier to explain than an unconscious woman lying on the backseat. Plus, this way he could keep an eye on her. He wasn’t entirely certain of the effects of these preloaded syringes. He’d been told that the range of unconsciousness went from an hour to three hours, but of course metabolisms differed. He’d keep another syringe handy, and if she showed signs of coming round, he’d simply jab her again.
He struggled to get her sitting in the passenger seat, but finally managed. The seat belt went around her shoulder and waist, plasticuffs around the wrists, and he stood, a bit winded, but happy with the results.
The seat belt held her tightly upright, head slumped forward. She looked like an attractive woman who’d been partying too much. Happened all the time.
Perfect.
Frederick got quietly into the rental and drove off, now happy for the heavy snowfall that had masked him walking out from Anne Lowell’s house with her over his shoulder.
All in all, this was shaping up into a most satisfactory and remunerative job.
* * *
The world was pain. Every kind of pain there was. Sharp and dull. Piercing and throbbing. Pain everywhere, but concentrated in pounding pulses in his right shoulder.
Jacko tried to lift his head to look at his shoulder and while he was at it, try to figure out what the fuck was going on. But when he lifted the back of his head an inch, it was too much. His head thudded back to the floor and he blacked out.
The next time he came to, he was able to orient himself better. Lauren’s house. Floor. Blood. His own. He tried to lift himself up on his elbow and blacked out again.
He swam back to consciousness. He was able to lift his hand enough to glance at his diver’s watch to see it was 8:15 before blacking out again.
He came to fifteen minutes later, at 8:30. The floor felt tacky with blood. His. He had time and place and pain. But this time he realized Lauren was gone and the pain was nothing. His body screamed protest as he lifted himself up on the elbow of the uninjured arm, came up on a knee, then up on shaking legs.
He nearly blacked out again but hung on grimly because no Lauren was infinitely worse than any pain his body could feel.
He’d spent a year in the most intense training in the world in which DIs screamed continuously that pain was weakness leaving the body. This didn’t feel like that, though. This was pain and weakness. But if he’d learned one thing in training and in his eight years as a SEAL, it was that he was stronger than his body. When his body told him to quit, he didn’t.
And if Lauren was missing, he couldn’t.
Lauren.
He turned his head, seeking. It hurt. He ignored it. Blackness was at the edge of his vision but he scanned the room as fast as he could, looking for her. He was thorough but he knew she wasn’t there. She was gone. The house had an unmistakably empty feel to it. Humans emanated some kind of vibration he was sensitive to. He was always point man going in because he could always tell if he was entering a space that was inhabited or not.
No Lauren. And the only blood was his.
Something on the floor. He bent to pick it up, nearly blacked out. He stood, swaying, for a full minute until blood could flow back to his head. He’d been wounded many times and knew that he was suffering from severe blood loss. But...fuck that. He didn’t have time to get medical care, a transfusion. Because what he was holding was ....
Memory rushed back in. Lauren, carrying her cell, tapping in a text message as she walked to the door. What he held was shards of plastic, a lithium battery, a shattered chip. Someone had taken Lauren’s cell phone and broken it. The white plastic had dark marks, some mud. Probably from a shoe.
The last few minutes before blacking out bloomed in his head. Lauren, answering the door. Jacko had been right behind her. She’d started to greet the man—tall, slender, dressed in expensive clothes, stylish black hat, the man he’d seen walking into the compound—and the man had pivoted without hesitation and fired at Jacko.
Getting rid of Lauren’s protector first.
Even if Jacko’d had time to react, he couldn’t have because his weapon had been back in the bedroom. He’d done that deliberately because he knew Lauren wanted this job, and knew she probably wouldn’t get it if by her side was a glowering guy who looked like him, hand on sidearm.
Scare the shit out of her client.
Except that if Jacko had had his weapon, he’d have nailed the fucker for sure and Lauren would be exactly where she should be—by his side.
Instead of gone.
He could barely think. Spots danced in front of his eyes. He could block out the pain—no one could become a SEAL and not know how to block pain—but he was losing blood and he was fucking weak.
He stepped forward toward the front door, not knowing what he was doing, without any kind of a plan, just knowing that she must have gone out through that door with Hat Man, and so like a dumb animal he was going to follow. But his body betrayed him. His legs wouldn’t hold him and he slipped to one knee. His head drooped forward, too heavy for his neck to support it. He watched as blood oozed out of his chest and dripped to the floor. Dripped, not spurted. Not arterial.
Dumbass. Of course. If it had been arterial blood he’d be dead by now. He shook his head sharply, trying to shake himself awake.
Took a deep breath. Could do it. No pulmonary atelectasis. Not lung shot. But deep tissue damage nonetheless.
Hat Man had killed Lauren’s cell thinking she couldn’t be tracked. But Jacko had a tactile memory of tracing the chain around her neck, feeling the silky softness of her skin beneath his fingers. He could follow her, but he couldn’t do this alone.
He pulled out his own cell, punched a number.
“Yo. Jacko my man. ‘Sup?” Metal’s deep voice sounded reassuring. Jacko clung to it the way a mountaineer clings to a fissure in the rock.
“Shot,” he gasped.
“Where?” Metal rapped out, all focus. Like Jacko he could react instantly to an emergency.
Where? Jacko could barely focus. “Lauren’s...house.”
An electronic beep and he could hear a vehicle start up. “No. Where were you shot?”
“Shoulder.” He took in a painful breath. “Twice.”
“Okay, I’m on my way—”
“No!” Jacko tried to shout but it came out more a low groan. “Not...here. Someone...took Lauren.” Saying the words was more painful than his wounds. He sent the tracker code to Metal. “Sending tracker...coordinates. We...go...”
He stopped, wheezing, unable to say anything more. But he didn’t need to.
“Got it. She’s on Bleecker Avenue.” Silence. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Mm.” Bleecker led to Washington, which was then a straight shot up the freeway to the airport. If she got into the air, she was gone. The tracker had a radius of only ten miles. “Bad.”
“Yeah. I’m on the other side of town—it’ll take me some time. Weather’s bad.”
“Taking...bike.”
“Negative,” Metal said sharply. “You’re wounded. I can make it faster than you.”
“No.” Through the haze, only one thing was crystal clear, surer than death. He was going after Lauren. He was going after his woman. “Taking...bike.”
He had his bike, as always, loaded in the back of his SUV. It would make faster time than the vehicle—he could take shortcuts. He was trying to map out a route in his head when Metal spoke again.
“Any crackling sounds when you breathe?”
He breathed in. It was hard to hear if his chest crackled over the sound of blood pounding in his head. “No,” he said finally after a couple of breaths.
“No subcutaneous emphysema, didn’t get your lung—that’s good. How much blood have you lost?” br />
Jacko was staggering to the door, opened it, looked out in the snowy darkness toward his vehicle. It looked miles away. A continent away. “Some,” he said.
“Jesus, Jacko. Don’t do it. Let me go.” Jacko could hear a tap. “I’m 8.7 miles away. Maybe I can make it.”
Jacko was 5.2 miles away. But even if he’d been a thousand miles away there was no question what he had to do. “Going.”
Jacko could hear a big gusty sigh. “Christ,” was all Metal said. “I’ll check in. Put your cell on the holder in the handlebars and switch on the audio in your helmet. I’ll keep track of both of you. Weather’s bad, Jacko.”
Jacko stopped for a second, tilted his head to the sky. Massive snowflakes were falling, dulling sound, dropping visibility. He turned slowly to look behind him, at the slug-like tracks of his feet. He was shuffling. Not good.
“Yeah. Weather’s...a bitch.”
“It’ll slow him down too. Who’s the fucker who took Lauren?”
“Can’t...talk.” Jacko was almost at the back of his SUV. He reached it and leaned against the side of the vehicle for a long moment.
“Okay. Doesn’t matter. Fucker’s going down. I’m on the road—we’ll meet where Lauren is and get her.”
Jacko nodded, unable to speak, and tapped End Call. He pulled up the tracker app superimposed on a map of Portland. There she was on Bleecker. Almost six miles away. Getting farther away with every passing second. There was no way he would allow her to get to the ten-mile mark. No way he was going to lose her.
He pulled open the back of the SUV, pulled down the ramp.
Pulling his bike out and rolling it down to the ground was something he’d done thousands of times. He didn’t even think about it. He wanted his bike on the ground, a little effort and then there it was, ready for him to ride.
Now? Now it could have been on Everest. On the fucking moon. God, only one way to do this. The hard way. He reached out, grabbed the back tire and pulled as hard as he could. The bike came tumbling down, landing on its side.
If anyone else had dared to do that to his bike he’d have killed him.