Wild Card by Lora Leigh
“You stupid fucking bitch,” Sienna drawled. “That’s for all the years I’ve had to put up with babying your whining ass because Rick insisted I should worry about you. And for marrying Nathan. Whore. You should have left the hometown boys to the hometown girls.” She settled back on the lap of the man who had held her moments before.
Brown eyes glared at her from behind the mask. Mike Conrad’s brown eyes. His gaze was malicious, satisfaction filling them, hatred glittering in them.
Sabella curled herself in a ball, her knees lifting to protect Noah’s child. And she stared at Mike and Sienna in disbelief.
Mike she could believe. But Sienna? Sienna who had been there when Nathan’s casket was buried. Who rocked her when she cried, who had forced her out of the house over the years and had played the part of the loving friend so convincingly.
“Look at her.” Sienna laughed. “Didn’t I tell you, lover? I’m the best. No one ever suspected.”
Sabella hadn’t suspected, but she knew in that moment, that a part of her had known, unconsciously, that this woman wasn’t her friend. Just as she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Sienna intended to see her dead.
But she knew no matter how hard they tried to hide, no matter how deep they might bury her body, Noah would find them. And when he did, he wouldn’t let the fact that Sienna was a woman save her. Mike Conrad’s past friendship with Nathan wouldn’t even be a memory.
He’d kill them both. And he would make it hurt.
She just prayed he found her before they managed to kill her.
Noah stepped from the garage as they heard the sirens in the distance and the squeal of tires, the sharp blasts of a horn.
He was aware of Nik moving behind him, the other mechanics as well as Toby stepping out to the parking lot. He was aware of a cold core of ice freezing inside him when Rory’s truck slid around a corner and raced to the garage, the sheriff, lights blazing, riding on his ass.
He stood stiff, still, as Nik cursed behind him. He heard the Russian cursing, felt the tension suddenly building in the air as Rory barreled into the parking lot, the truck fishtailing as he put on the brakes, slamming to a stop.
He wasn’t aware of moving. He wrenched the door open and caught his brother as he fell into his arms, blood staining his shirt, tears washing his face.
“Noah!” Rory screamed out, hysteria brightening his eyes. “Ah God. Ah God, Noah, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Noah held his brother, dragging him into the garage and then the office as Rick rushed in behind them. He could feel Rory’s blood soaking his shirt, his skin.
“Where’s Sabella, Rory?” He put his brother in a chair before grabbing a handful of clean mechanic’s rags and pressing them to Rory’s shoulder. “Tell me where Sabella is.”
Rory sobbed. His head fell back on the chair and he howled in rage. “They took her! Took her and Sienna. Noah, I tried to grab her, but Sienna stumbled. And they took Sabella.”
Noah stared at him. Something beyond rage took hold of him.
“What the hell do you mean, they took them?” Rick tried to push past Noah, rage echoing in his voice. “What the fuck is going on here?”
Nik hauled him back, jerked the handgun from his hand, and snarled down at him. Noah didn’t pay attention. He didn’t give a fuck about Rick.
“Who has her, Rory?” His voice was calm. “Did you recognize anyone?”
“Masks.” Rory shook his head furiously. “They were wearing masks. When I tried to grab for Sabella, one of the bastards pulled a gun. It was silenced. I jerked to the side and kept trying to get to her.” He held his shoulder and rocked forward. “Ah Christ. I’m sorry, Noah. I’m sorry.”
“Nik, get on it,” Noah ordered quietly.
“Calling now.”
“Rory.” He gripped Rory’s jaw. “Rory, look at me. Tell me what you saw.”
Rory stared back at him, dazed with pain and blood loss. His shirt was soaked with blood.
“Tan van.” He shook his head, tears still filling his eyes. “Black masks. Black clothes. Pulled to a stop beside us and Sienna stumbled.” He shook his head again. “I don’t know why. She knocked into Belle and they both fell toward the door while I was trying to grab Belle. They jerked her inside. Mud on the tires, on the frame. It looked fresh. No plates, I checked. They were gone. Brown eyes.” He stared up at Noah. “The guy that took Belle. He had brown eyes. Really dark eyes. I know those eyes.”
Conrad’s eyes.
“Nik, ambulance,” Noah said softly. Rory was going to need help. He turned back to his brother. “Did they say anything? Tell me, Rory, did any of them say anything?”
Rory was panting now, shock taking over. He stared back at Noah, dazed, fighting back unconsciousness.
“Said. Said something about good hunting. As the doors closed. Someone laughed, and said it would be good hunting.”
“Teams moving,” Nik reported. “ETA is twenty minutes.”
“How long ago, Rory?” Noah questioned him then. “When did it happen?”
Rory was shaking now. He looked at his wrist. Blood coated the face of his watch. Noah wiped it off, watching his brother carefully. The false calm that filled him was just a prelude. The ice was coming. Noah could feel it coming.
Rory sobbed. “An hour,” he whispered. “Christ, Noah. An hour. I blacked out, and the lot was nearly empty. No one saw. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Nik. What’s Travis reporting?”
“Movement on Leon,” Nik stated. “There was a pullout five minutes ago. He’s trying to track but T lost signal.”
T. Tehya.
Noah turned and stared at a silent Rick. He was watching Rory, watching Noah.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Rick said faintly. “I watched them bury you.”
A man ran a risk when returning to his hometown, pretending to be someone he wasn’t, and claiming the wife he had left.
“I still am. Dead.” He bared his teeth at Rick. “You’re in. But God help you if you’re a part of this.”
Rory shuddered as Noah turned back to him.
“Noah, she called him ‘baby.’ ”
Noah sharpened his focus on Rory. “Who?”
Rory frowned. “When the door closed. Sienna. Brown eyes jerked her inside. She said ‘baby.’ ”
“You misheard,” Rick objected behind them. “You had to have misheard, Rory.” But the objection was faint and filled with bitter pain.
When Noah turned back to the sheriff, he was staring at Rory in horror, in knowledge.
Rick shook his head as though clearing a fog and stared back at Noah, his tobacco-brown eyes filled with anguish. “He misheard.”
Rory hadn’t misheard. There was a leak in the Alpine sheriff’s force. That leak was Sienna, not Rick as they had first assumed.
“Nik, what do we have?”
“Ambulance pulling in.”
Noah jerked around, pinning him with his gaze as Nik grimaced. “We got nothing yet, man. The team’s pulling in. Trav is tracking and T is working comm. That’s all we have.”
“Who the hell are you?” Rick grabbed Noah’s arm.
Slowly, more to control the impulse to rip the sheriff’s throat out than for any other reason, Noah turned back to him. Then he smiled.
He could feel the blood pumping through his veins, his muscles hardening, tightening. His vision edged with red, with blood, and the monster was free.
“I’m the BCM’s worst fucking nightmare,” he said softly. “I’m a dead man walking, and I’ll take every damned one of them to hell with me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Rory had been transported to the hospital under duress. He hadn’t wanted to go. He had begged Noah not to make him go. The team was assembled, quietly, in the apartment after that. No one had seen them enter, no one knew they were there.
Rick stood at the back door, staring through the narrow window, tense, prepared, as he listened to the team assemble the gea
Noah was listening to Travis Caine’s report from his attempts to track the van that had transported the FBI agent Chuck Leon, when his cell phone rang.
Silence filled the apartment when Noah pulled it free of its holder, and mouthed, Sabella’s cell.
He attached the electronic GPS tracker into his phone, then flipped it open.
“Blake.”
“I’m sorry,” Sabella whispered.
She was crying. Noah could hear the huskiness in her voice, the tears.
“It’s okay, baby,” he told her gently. “Are they there?”
“They want to talk—” Her voice cut off, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he heard her cry out.
His nostrils flared, the need for blood exploding, pounding in his head.
“The sheriff is with you, we know that.” A mechanical voice came over the line.
“He is.”
The thin, distorted chuckle did nothing to disguise the glee in the abductor’s voice.
“Tell him to stay there. If he leaves, they both die.”
“Very well.”
There was silence. “You’re being agreeable. That’s very good.”
He remained silent.
“You went over the truck, didn’t you, Blake?” the voice drawled. “You found the evidence and turned it in. Didn’t you?”
“I did.”
They knew. He knew. He would give them that much.
“Yeah, that putz agent we questioned just didn’t convince us that he found it. He’s still alive, by the way. Do you care?”
“Not particularly.”
Another chuckle. “You’re not an agent, are you? What are you then?”
“Let’s say, a concerned bystander,” he drawled. “My mother was Mexican. She wouldn’t have liked you very much.”
It was a lie. His mother had been pure blue blood.
“Then your mother was a whore. We kill whores.”
Noah waited. A heartbeat. Two. Three.
“What do you want?” He kept his voice calm, cool. It was icy. There was no burning rage. There was no impatience. He had known they would call.
“Belle is a beautiful little whore too.” The voice was smug, taunting. “She’ll make a nice play thing when you’re dead.”
“You have to kill me first,” Noah pointed out.
He didn’t look at the men in the room. He stared at the single picture that Sabella had kept in the apartment. A picture of them before they married.
His arms were around her shoulders as they stared into the camera, her expression soft, vulnerable. Loving. He could almost smell that day. The scent of her perfume, the scent of sex still clinging to them.
“Yes, we do get to kill you first.” Laughter trickled over the connection. “It’s good that you’re alone except for the sheriff. All your mechanics in place as they should be. Everyone just busy little beavers, aren’t they, Mr. Blake?” We’re watching, you know.
“That’s their job,” he agreed.
No emotion. He felt nothing. He kept staring at the picture of him and Sabella. No, the picture of Sabella and her husband. The man he was then didn’t resemble the man he was now. There was no fear, no worry. There was a sense of death, a knowledge that no matter the outcome, blood was going to spill and it wouldn’t be all his. None of it would be Sabella’s.
“You’ll make an interesting hunt,” the abductor said to torment him. “A nice little addition to my trophies. That wasn’t nice of you, poking your nose in where it wasn’t wanted”
He nodded slowly. Here it came. Finally. The end of the road.
“Here’s what you’re going to do, Mr. Blake. And you’re going to do it alone. If we see anyone else leave the garage, then the girls die. If you don’t follow directions exactly, they die. If you’re late, they die.”
Melodrama. Fuck, he hated the wait.
“Yeah, I breathe the wrong way and they die. I got it.”
He was aware of Jordan wincing, the looks the other men gave him.
Another chuckle. “Do you know the national park?”
Like the back of his hand. “Not very well. I haven’t had time to do much sightseeing.”
There was silence. Noah waited it out. He let it flow over him, refused to consider the risks. He was a nobody here. They didn’t suspect anything. He was a mechanic, nothing more.
“Do you know where they found the little female FBI agent? I know you been in town long enough for that.”
The canyon was about an hour away.
“I know.”
“You’ll be met. You have an hour after this call disconnects to get there. Would you like to tell your little girlfriend bye?”
“If you want your hunt, I’ll see her alive before it begins. She’s of no use to me dead.”
Laughter again, grating, knowing.
“Sure. You can say your goodbyes in person. You’ll be met. You have one hour.”
Noah disconnected. He dragged his jacket from the back of a chair. He was already outfitted in the chaps. The butter-soft leather conformed and moved easily with him. Hiking boots. Skin tag locator on both shoulders. Belt buckle equipped with a locator as well. All deactivated until needed.
“You’ll have to slip out with the others,” he told Rick as he moved for the door.
“Like hell. If she’s in on this, then I’ll take care of it.” The sheriff’s eyes burned with anger as he caught Noah’s arm.
“Grip my arm again and your throat comes out.” He peeled the sheriff’s hand from his arm. “You’ll come in with the others. And she’s the only way they could have taken Sabella so easily. You know it, as well as I do.”
Rick’s jaw clenched, a muscle ticking furiously at the side.
“We need someone to prosecute, Noah,” Jordan reminded him. “Remember that when the hunt starts. We’ll be in place and ready to move. T will track you from the rendezvous.”
Noah nodded and left the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
He could feel the eyes on him. By time he made the rendezvous, it would be nearing dark. The others could slip into place then. Getting them out of the garage wouldn’t be a problem.
Noah had been a SEAL. He believed in escape routes to hell and back. And Jordan knew them all.
He straddled the Harley and set the motor to throbbing before kicking into gear and tearing out of the parking lot.
The wind whipped through his hair, and he heard Sabella’s light laughter, her passion moans. The sound of tears in her voice when she called.
She was frightened. He could hear the fear. But he heard something else too. He had heard trust. There hadn’t been hysteria. She hadn’t begged him to save her. She had known he would come for her. He had heard that in her voice. Her knowledge, her trust.
She was a woman any man could be proud to call his own. But Sabella was still tender, still vulnerable. She was a woman who loved with everything inside her. And that was how she loved the man he had been.
With everything inside her.
He kicked the gas to the Harley and let it tear down the road. He knew exactly where he was going. He’d tracked the area after the unit moved in and canvassed every inch of it. The female FBI agent’s body had been found at the base of one of the small rises, her body dug up by scavengers. The area had been widely publicized.
For a second, just a second, an image of Sabella flashed in his mind, eyes wide in death, her face white, lips bloodless. He twisted the gas and let the Harley tear down the road. Rage bit at him, hard, fast, before he countered it, before the icy hunger for blood overrode it once again.
He wasn’t a husband. He wasn’t a lover. He was a dead man. And he was about to have company in hell. It was that simple. That was how he had survived for the past six years and. It was how he had rehabilitated, it was how he rebuilt himself.
He was a husband. A lover. And what belonged to him had been threatened. Taken. It woul
Dusk was settling as Noah pulled in, only feet from where the dead agent’s body had been found. Three black-masked shadows waited on four-wheelers at the base of the rise.
Noah kicked the stand on the Harley, turned it off, and dismounted slowly. He stared back at them. None of them were Mike Conrad. But there was Delbert Ransome, those watery brown eyes gleamed like a rat’s. The other two men he identified by the shape of their faces and the color of their eyes. One was a ranch hand from the Malone ranch. The other was the sheriff’s deputy, Hershel Jenkins. Damn. Rory was going to be pissed. He and Hershel had been drinking buddies at one time.
Hershel moved from his four-wheeler and pointed to the small rack behind him. In his hand he carried plastic restraints.
Noah moved to the back of the ATV, slid on, and let the son of a bitch cuff his wrists to the edge of the rack. Seconds later, they were tearing off through the night.
He felt the first electronic skin tag tracker on his left shoulder heat up. It had a five-minute range. Eyes were already watching. He could feel them. The SEALs would be in place. Reno, Clint, Kell, Macey, and Ian. They would have been deployed from the bunker the minute they knew the rendezvous point and they’d be tracking.
Satellite would be trained on the ATVs’ progress. The ATVs’ headlights cut through the darkness, but Noah knew there were others watching as well. Militia members, to make certain there was no backup.
There was plenty of backup.
They’d thought Noah would be taken, not Sabella. The outsider coming in and taking over something it was rumored the militia wanted. That being the garage. He had controlled it, controlled its owner. They hadn’t expected Sabella to be taken.
Noah held on to the rack, braced himself, and flowed with the hard thumps, the deliberately rough ride. These boys thought they knew how to hurt. They didn’t know anything about pain. About madness. About death.
Noah knew. And he knew they had no idea what monster they were bringing into their midst.
The night vision contacts were working, though not as well as goggles would have. The faded green aura of the landscape was clearly visible. He could see another of Gaylen Patrick’s ranch hands in a pickup as they passed it, tucked into the shelter of a small grove of pines.