ANOMALY.MIL (The Conspiracy Series Book One): A Romantic Suspence Novel (4 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

A silver Ford Escape was not the car she had been expecting a man like Ansel Babineaux to drive. A Ferrari, an Aston Martin with a supermodel in the passenger seat, maybe, but not a Ford SUV, and a silver one to boot. However, for an unremarkable car, he sure was driving it fast. She held onto the armrest, thankful for the separation of the control panel between them.

The man was so tall that his head was practically popping out of the sunroof. Seneca tried not to stare at the muscles in his arms as he drove, but she could not help it.
God, I'm a horrible person.
Cat was gone, and she could not see past the beauty of the man trying to save her.

She stared to cry.

"We'll find her," her brother said gently. And Seneca was so ashamed of her own licentious thoughts that she started to cry harder.

Seneca looked out the window and swiped at her cheeks. "I know," she snapped, sounding annoyed. She closed her eyes to admonish herself then forced herself to face him. "I'm sorry. I'm just so…scared."

"I know." He stared at the road ahead of them. "I am too."

Her heart lurched as she looked at him again, looked at the pain in his striking eyes. This powerful man was just a little brother, scared that something had happened to his big sister.

"We'll find her," she said, determined to help him.

He glanced over, giving her a halfhearted smile, and then his phone rang, snapping them out of their somber mood. Ansel punched a button on the roof of the car with his finger.

"Dave?" he asked, both of them hoping for good news.

"No, it’s me
,
" a masculine voice said. No identification, no greeting, all business. “They want you in.”

"I can't come in, Gunner."

"What do you mean, you can't come in?"
the other guy asked, as if that were not an option, and Seneca was so confused. Cat had said her brother owned a martial arts business?

"My sister has been…compromised."

"Kidnapped?" Gunner was alarmed. "Are you sure?"

Ansel's dark brows furrowed, and she watched as he thought about the question. "Yes, but I can’t talk ri—“"

"Fuck." There was a long pause from the guy on the phone. "I'm so sorry. I'll let the colonel know."

Ansel's eyes darted in her direction, and then returned to the road. "Thanks."

"No problem." 

Colonel?
Were there colonels in the martial arts world? She didn't think so. Masters. Grandmasters, maybe. But she had never heard of a colonel. Unless it was some weird Elvis Presley-like thing, where his boss used to be a colonel. More like a nickname.

"But just to warn you…”
Gunner added
.
“They want you back urgently. There's even a three star sent by the DOD. General Hawkins? I've never heard of him, but he's been meeting with the colonel behind closed doors all morning."

General? The Department of Defense?
Seneca looked at Cat's brother in a whole different light. The black clothes. The martial arts. The muscles.

"Shit." His whole body tensed.

"Fuck 'em. It's your sister," his friend said. "What can I do to help?"

"Satellite images of my sister's house."

"What time was she taken?"

"12:15."

There was a long pause. "I'll get back to you," the man assured him. "And…I'm sorry, Ansel."

Ansel stared into nothing. "Let me know as soon as you can," he said, and then punched the button again, ending the call.

Seneca waited a moment before stating the obvious. "You're still in the military, aren't you?" He did not confirm or deny her assertion, which only strengthened her suspicion. "And you never told your sister." She was angry on her friend's behalf. "Does Dave know?"

He shrugged his massive shoulders, seeing no way he could deny it after she heard his conversation. "It's best if they don't know."

How could Catherine not know? Ansel Babineaux screamed military, but it must be hard to believe your little brother was… "Are you Special Forces?"

Surprised, he turned to Seneca, his green eyes boring a hole in her.

"I was." He turned to look ahead of him.

"You were?" Seneca pointed at the car's Bluetooth button. "That definitely sounded like you
are
in the military. As in currently. As in…" She lifted her hand and made air quotes.  '' 'They want you back urgently’.”

"I decided to quit this morning." He was serious, which was not surprising.

"When you found out about Cat?" Seneca’s nod was sympathetic.

"No," was all he said, and then pushed the Bluetooth button again. "Call Dave Miller."

After only one ring Dave answered, "
Hello
?" He sounded terrible, and her heart bled for him.

"I'm five minutes away from the house with Seneca Reed." Ansel's voice softened when he spoke to his brother-in-law and it made her like him even more. "I want you to pull up all the video footage from your security cameras."

"Oh my God! I forgot about the cameras." You could hear Dave beating himself up from here. "Okay, I'll get the footage ready," Dave said, and then hung up on them.

They pulled into Cat's driveway five minutes later, and Ansel jumped out of the car. He paused briefly to glance at the discreet camera mounted on the front porch then looked back at the portion of the street it covered. Ansel opened the door without knocking, and Seneca could barely keep up with him as they made their way towards Cat's study in the back of the house.

  When they got there, Dave already had the video of the security cameras pulled up on the screen. He sucked in a sharp breath when they saw video of three men in dark suits coming to the front door before kidnapping his wife.

  "Mormons," Ansel mumbled, and Seneca looked at him, confused. He explained, “I was on the phone with Cat when she said there were Mormons at the front door and she would call me back when she got rid of them."

"Those guys look like federal agents to me," Dave said. "But no one thinks that the FBI is going to show up at their front door, do they?"

Seneca agreed, but she didn't say so. All of their attention was focused on the small monitor. They watched as Cat talked for ten minutes with the federal agents standing on her doorstep.

You could see the bottom half of a black SUV parked on the street in the background. But unfortunately, no license plate was visible. Then one of the agents pulled out some papers from a black briefcase, and handed them to Cat. He pointed at the papers as she read them, and then her hand flew to her mouth.

When she had finished reading, Cat handed the papers back to the agent, and started to go back inside. But then, the man with the papers said something that made her stop cold. Cat nodded then looked up at the camera and made a heart shape with her hands, mouthing, 'I love you’.

Dave's chin began to quiver, and he reached up to put his fingers on the image of his wife as if he could stop her from getting into the SUV.

"What could they possibly have said that would make Cat want to go with them?" Seneca looked at Ansel, and she could see that he was wondering the same thing. "She didn't take anything with her. Not even her purse? The whole thing is so…" Seneca motioned at the monitor. "Weird."

"There was something in those papers that convinced her to go with them," Ansel announced, before offering a half smile to his brother-in-law to reassure him. "This is good news, Dave."

"How?" he scoffed. "My wife is gone and we don't know why."

"But she was not taken by force. She was taken by the Feds. Which means that Cat is safe and will contact you when she can."

"Why in the world would the Feds want—"

They all tensed when the video showed three
different
men coming to the front door not five minutes after Catherine had left with the Feds. These guys were more ominous than the men in the suits. They wore dark pants and black t-shirts. And if you looked very closely, one of them held a gun in his right hand.

Seneca could not wrap her brain around it. Cat wrote about restaurants. What could she possibly have done to have—

A loud crack caused her to jump away from the desk. She looked down at a smashed cell phone, and the marble paperweight Ansel held in his right hand. "What are you—"

"Dave, you have five minutes to pack a bag. Seneca, give me your phone," he ordered.

"No!" She backed away from him.

"Give me your phone," Ansel growled, towering over her.

Seneca froze, stilled by the darkness storming in his light eyes. He yanked her purse off her shoulder and rummaged through it, pulling out her brand new smartphone. He laid it on the desk, and before she could stop him, Ansel was smashing it to pieces.

"No!" she screamed, but too late.
What if Cat tried to call her?
Seneca stared at the pile of metal and glass that used to be her phone. "Why did you do that?" she was shouting, and Dave just stared at his brother-in-law like he was insane.

"Because, that…" Ansel pulled out a gun, then pointed at the blond man on the screen. "Is Gunner."

CHAPTER SIX

"I don't understand. Who’s Gunner?" Dave had not moved from the desk chair. "And why the hell do you have a gun!"

"Five minutes, Dave," Ansel barked, having no time to explain. "Go!"

His brother-in-law looked at Ansel like he had never seen him before. "Five minutes to pack a bag for what?" Dave asked. "I don't understand what—"

"See those guys?" Ansel pointed at the monitor, and had no choice but to be blunt. "They were sent here to kill you or Catherine. They will have multiple satellites positioned over the house. And now that they know I'm here, and I know they were here…"

He did not have to finish.

"They’re coming back!" Seneca caught on quickly.

"Yes. As a matter of fact—" He lifted Dave out of the desk chair by the right arm. "—forget the bag, let's get the hell out of here."

They walked out to his car, and Ansel shoved his brother-in-law into the back seat. Seneca got in on the passenger side, not needing to be asked twice.

"Drive!" she said, fully understanding the seriousness of the situation. Ansel peeled out onto the street, and Seneca looked behind them to make sure that they were not being followed. "Gunner is the guy you talked to on the way over here, right?" she asked, looking at him with an appropriate amount of fear in her eyes.

Ansel thought about their conversation in the car. Gunner had sounded genuinely concerned by the news of Cat's disappearance. But then, when he had asked his friend about the 12:15 satellite feed, there had been that pause. Brief as it was, he had heard it. And now it made sense, because Gunner knew what Ansel would find on that camera footage. 

"Who the hell is Gunner?" Dave asked again.

"Lay down," Ansel ordered, glancing in the rear view mirror as he thought about their escape strategy. The only problem was that Gunner knew what he would do. But luckily, not how he would do it.

"Aren't you gonna tell him?" Seneca turned to face Ansel, utterly indignant.

"Tell him what?"
What was she talking about
?

The woman swiveled around to look at the back seat, and blurted out to Dave before Ansel could stop her. "Your brother-in-law does not own a martial arts company like he told you. He works for the US military in some type of black ops."

"What?" Shocked, Dave started to sit up, but Seneca placed her hand on his shoulder to prevent him from doing so. “You got out of the Army ten years ago!”

"How did you not know, Dave?" Her hand motioned up and down Ansel's body. "I mean, look at him." Ansel would have been flattered had her tone not implied Neanderthal.

"I don't know." Dave defended himself as best he could. "I'm a computer guy. I just thought he worked out a lot…in a dojo…or someplace where people like that go."

'People like that’?
  They were talking about him as if he wasn't there.

"Okay, whatever," Seneca said, scrubbing the conversation away with a wave of her hand. "It doesn't matter. What does matter is that Gunner works with Ansel…in Special Forces."

"Are you saying that Catherine was kidnapped…because of her brother?"

Ansel closed his eyes, feeling as though he had been stabbed in the chest. He never thought about that. Maybe because he didn't want to. This was not some foreign government kidnapping his sister to torture her for information about him. No, this was his own goddamn government, using his own goddamn friends, to kill his own goddamn sister.

He wanted to punch something. 

"Of course not," Seneca said, easing his guilt. "Ansel is just a tool to them."
Ouch.
It was a harsh observation, but the truth. "What I'm saying, is that for some reason the United States government sent Gunner to your house to get Catherine."

"Maybe they were there to protect her?" Dave speculated.

"Gunner was not there to protect her." He knew. Ansel could tell by his stance. The way Gunner had his gun drawn, ready for action.

"How do you know?"

Because he had been on similar missions.
The thought flashed in his mind and Ansel scoffed, shaking his head. He could not believe he was going to have to spell it out for his brother-in-law.

Thankfully, he didn't have to.

"Wait." Seneca scrunched up her little nose. "If Cat went with the Feds, then why was a highly trained, and I assume very expensive to deploy, military unit sent to your house to kill her…or Dave. Which is far less likely as they could have just waited at Microsoft instead?"

That was a good question.
The only question.

Either two branches of the government had a major communications breakdown, or one of those branches had their own agenda, and he knew which one.
General Hawkins
. It was no coincidence that a three-star general shows up at his office looking for him on the day his sister disappears.

Damn, it was his fault.

But why? What had he done to provoke such decisive action? He racked his brain, but could think of no reason that he would be disavowed. And besides, the government never killed the families of disavowed assets. They just arranged accidents for those operatives, or sent guys into action with no chance of getting out.

So, why break their unwritten rule now?

"We're here," Ansel announced, pulling into the dim parking garage of a seedy motel that loved cash, and intentionally left the place camera-free.

He pulled up next to an old Chevy pickup with rusty blue paint, and an even rougher looking toolbox bolted to the back.

Twisting around to look at his passengers, Ansel ordered them both, "Until we're in our rooms, you will do
exactly
what I say, when I say it. Understand?" 

They both nodded, and Ansel got to work.

"Dave, get my bags out of the back of the car then put them in the toolbox of that truck," he said, jerking his head in the direction of the pickup. "Here's the key."

"On it," his brother-in-law nodded, and got out of the car to get started.

"Seneca, do you have any makeup with you?"

She looked confused. "Yeah?"

"Put more on, heavy, but not like you're in a play." Her nod was tentative, but he kept talking. "Then get your hair out of that ponytail, and let it hang loose. Once you’ve done that, come help me."

Ansel hopped out of the Ford Escape, and was surprised by how cold it had gotten. He walked to the back of the pickup, and was glad to see that it had started to rain.

The clouds would obstruct the satellite images, and make it much harder to track them. But Ansel knew Gunner, the guy was relentless—the rain would only slow him down. He needed to hurry.

Reaching down to the bottom of the toolbox, he pulled out a wrench before Dave covered it up with their luggage. Ansel walked around to the back of the SUV then pulled a small bag off of Dave's shoulder.

"We're gonna need this," he said, setting it back in the Escape.

The hidden compartment at the back of his nondescript SUV was not easy to access. It took a minute before he could open it without scratching the inside of the car, giving away its location.

He carefully laid the heavy plastic panel down, and reached in for two new license plates. One for the truck, and one for the Ford Escape. When he had switched the plates out, Ansel stored the old ones in the hidden compartment, and tossed the wrench back in the toolbox before locking it.

"Carry this." Ansel handed Dave the small bag then checked that both vehicles were secured.

By then, Seneca had gotten out of the car with her purse, and he smiled at the dramatic transformation.

"How's this?" she asked, distaste pulling at her upper lip.

"Not bad." He set down the suitcase in his hand, and moved her closer to a garage light.

The first thing Ansel did was mess up her perfectly combed hair, so that Seneca looked like she had just gotten out of bed.  Next, he smudged the heavy brown eye shadow that highlighted the gold in her eyes.

"Owww," she protested, covering her left eye with her right hand as if she had been punched. "Take it easy."

He ignored her, looking to see what else needed to be done. Seneca's big black purse was hanging from her shoulder, which was a nice touch.

"Spin around," he said, not satisfied.

Seneca complied, slowly, and with a huge roll of her eyes. She had a nice ass, really nice, and her old Vans were the perfect shoes for what he was trying to convey.

He looked at her red V-neck t-shirt, and said, "Sorry," before placing his hands on either side of her chest and ripping the shirt down the front about three inches.

She gasped, and Ansel stared down at her breasts struggling against her lacy black push-up bra, but it was not enough. He ripped Seneca's shirt two more inches, making sure her boobs were the star of the show before stepping back to take a look at his own handiwork.

I'd pay for her
.

"What are you doing?" she whispered, her large eye growing huge.

"Saving your life," he answered, then took his thumb and wiped it across her lower lip.

But it was no good. The red lipstick just looked like he had taken his thumb and wiped it across her lower lip. There was only one solution.

Ansel put both hands on either side of her jaw, and kissed her. Hard. He rubbed the red color over the edges of her full lips as if they had been at it for hours. He kissed her a little longer than he had to.
To make sure
. Then he let her go.

Seneca was breathing heavily when she looked up at him. "Just how is that supposed to save my life?" she spat. And she was so cute, he was tempted to kiss her again.

Ansel grinned. "You'll see."

They walked through the drizzle around to the front of the cheap hotel with Ansel's arm draped possessively over Seneca's shoulder. 

"How's it goin'?" He greeted the guy at the front desk with his best Southern accent. "We need two adjoining rooms at the
very
back of the motel, please."

"How long will you be staying?" The guy finally looked up.

His eyes immediately went to Seneca's boobs, and then drifted to a nervous Dave carrying a camera case. The clerk smiled and met Ansel's eye.

"Oh, we're just staying the one night," Ansel smiled back, caressing Seneca's back, and then lower.

The guy looked at Seneca's mouth, and he knew the clerk was wondering what she had done to smear her lipstick. "It’s eighty-nine dollars a night per room, cash only."

"Not a problem." Ansel pulled out his wallet and handed the guy two hundred dollar bills. "And if we can have a
real
quiet room, away from…other guests? That would be just perfect."

The guy grinned, turning to look at Seneca as he said, "I'll put you in a room where you can be as loud as you wanna be." The guy's flabby gut pressed against the counter as he leaned forward to hand Ansel the room keys. "And if you need anything, you have any problems with the lighting…Anything at all." His tone turned lecherous. "You just call me and I'd be happy to come help."

"Nah," Ansel said, wanting to punch the guy in the face, but instead he slapped Seneca on the ass. "We’ve been around lights before. Haven't we, sweetheart?"

Seneca smiled seductively, surprising him.

"Yeah, baby. We've done lotsa things before," she purred, then wrapped her arms around Ansel’s waist, while batting those pretty little eyes at the clerk.

The guy's mouth fell open as he imagined just what those things might be.

"Well, we better get started then," Ansel said, snapping the clerk out of it. He held up their room keys as a wave of thanks to the smarmy clerk, then walked out of tiny lobby. "Let's go," he said to Dave, his confused camera man. "The daylight's dying."