Deadly Target [IAD Agency 3] (Siren Publishing Classic) (23 page)

“How can you guys be so fucking calm about all this?” Gage raged at them. “It has to be the same guy! We have to find whoever took them and we’re not gonna do that just sitting here!”

Slade sent him a hard look. “We have to figure out who the fuck that is before we run out there looking for them. The only way we’re going to do that is to narrow down the who, the why, and the where, so sit down and shut the fuck up if you aren’t going to help.”

Nick gripped his shoulder. “I want to get them back just as much as you, Gage. But Slade is right. We need to figure out where to start looking.”

Gage pulled away but didn’t sit. Instead he began to pace the room like a large jungle cat, energy humming through him that pushed him to do something, anything.

This was killing him.

They had to do something!

“I knew that woman was going to get herself into trouble. Even on vacation, she can’t seem to help herself,” Slade muttered. “I’m going to conference in Bishop. Hold on.” He dialed a number, and a few seconds later Brett Michaels’s scowling face popped up on the monitor next to Rock’s face.

“This better be good,” Brett barked out.

“We’ve got a problem,” Slade began.

Brett snorted. “Tell me about it. I’m in El Paso dealing with a clusterfuck of my own. Fucking Trinity… That crazy bitch was tired of waiting, so she blew off Steele and got herself counted as one of the illegals paying to be brought over in the last shipment.”

“Christ. This is the Alvarez op?” Rock asked.

Agents Lucian Steele and Katrina “Trinity” Cross had been working to take down the Alvarez cartel in Mexico over the last few weeks. Besides running drugs, the cartel had taken over a large portion of the coyote business of running illegal immigrants over the border into the US. Recently they started kidnapping the young women and men and selling them off as slaves instead of simply taking the money to smuggle them into the country.

Brett nodded. “We needed the find out who the end buyer was for this bullshit before we shut it down. Trinity put a couple of skin tags on herself before she got taken so we could track her to the source. What she didn’t count on was four of those animals locking themselves in the back of the truck with them on the trip over so they could sample the products on the long drive over. They tied up the illegals and tried to take a shot at Trinity and another young girl.”

“I’m guessing Trinity took care of them,” Rock said.

Brett sighed. “She did, but they messed her up first. When we got to the buyer’s warehouse, we opened the truck to find a group of traumatized illegals, four dead bodies, and our girl, stabbed and beat to shit.”

“Fuck. Is she okay?”

“She’s in surgery. I’m at the hospital waiting for an update while Steele oversees the cleanup with the local LEOS. They say she should be okay, but can you imagine being stuck in the back of a hot truck for hours with four dead bodies…in the dark? I swear to god, these female agents are going to be the death of me.”

“Speaking of,” Rock began then cleared his throat. “Slade has something he wants to tell you.”

Fucking Rock.

Slade cursed and crossed his arms over his massive chest. “Lynx is missing.”

Brett’s face cleared of all expression as his hard eyes bore into theirs even through the screen. “I’m sorry. I must have heard you wrong because it sounded like you just said that Lynx, the woman who is on fucking vacation, is missing? She’s not a goddamn set of keys! How the hell did you manage to lose her?”

“She was in Denver this morning then went to lunch with Katie Stark. No one has seen or heard from either of them for hours. We’ve tracked their car and found it in a parking lot in the city. We’ve tried tracing their phones, but we’ve got nothing. Bishop, there are women going missing all over the fucking place around here.”

Brett let out a string of curses. His image bounced on screen as he began to pace and he jerked at his hair like a man under extreme strain. “Fuck! I told you. These women are going to kill me! Give me the basics of the missing women.”

Slade gave a concise recap of all the information they had then Brett nodded. “Bring up the tracking program.”

“Her phone is where the vehicle is,” Rock said.

“It’s not for that. Did she take her cane with her today?”

Rock nodded. “She had it with her during her visit.”

“I made her promise she would use it today while she was out,” Gage added.

Brett’s eyes narrowed. He scowled as he finally saw Gage and Nick standing behind Slade in view of the camera. “What the hell are those two doing in the ops center? Slade, have you lost your damn mind?”

“They’re here for a reason. I’ve read them in on the basic,” Slade replied. “It’s Gage’s sister that’s gone missing and he’s…involved with Lynx.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus, are you fucking kidding me? My agent and my damn neighbor. Of course!” They saw Brett look away from the screen at someone they couldn’t see. “What are you looking at?” he barked out then glared back through the monitor. “There is a tracker in her cane. Type in tracker “MLL2013.”

Rock’s eyes widened. “Does Lynx know it’s there?”

“Hell no,” Brett scoffed. “She’d have my balls for breakfast if she did. Besides, it wasn’t my idea. It was her uncle, the commander, that did it. He told me after the fact.”

“Got it,” Slade confirmed. “Passcode?”

“Passcode is ‘stubbornlynx.’ No space.”

Slade snorted in amusement as he typed in the code and waited for the program to run. His breath hissed out in frustration when nothing came up. “Nothing. She’s either somewhere they’re blocking the signal, or they found the tracker.”

“No way they found it,” Brett countered. “They have to have her in a secured location. Keep checking it and send me any updates. I’m on the next flight out and will be there shortly.”

As the screen went blank when Brett signed off Gage felt an overwhelming sense of helplessness surge through him that almost brought him to his knees. That was his sister out there and the woman he… Shit. Yes, he loved her.

He loved Mikayla like he never thought he’d ever love a woman. And like he’d feared, he loved her like a fucking madman. Every second that ticked by without knowing if she was hurt or still alive was driving him insane. It was debilitating. He simply didn’t understand how to deal with this kind of fear.

Gage didn’t care if he knew her for a year or a day. He loved Mikayla and he couldn’t imagine not getting the chance to tell her. Now, all he could do was wait and pray that they found them in time.

Mikayla floated in a sea of pain as time seemed to stand still. She lay on the bed, flexing her muscles to try and bring the feeling back to her rigid limbs. Since the men had left the room she had time to consider the conversation she had overheard while they thought she was still under, and one thing was clear.

Time was running out.

She had inadvertently walked into a whole shitload of trouble and brought Katie with her. Mikayla would never forgive herself if anything happened to the younger woman and she prayed that she would be in time to get them the hell out of this mess. They’d been missing for hours now and she was confident that her friends would be looking for her. The only question was, would they find them in time?

The paralyzing drugs slowly wore off as she struggled to regain control of her body. Before Dr. Ellis had returned to the room shortly after everyone had left, stating to one of the guards that he had to change her saline bag. He had done so but had also injected something into her IV that had her blood boiling in her veins after he left.

At first she thought he was trying to kill her but soon realized that whatever he had given her was making her recover faster. The uncomfortable tingles had spread and changed to sharp needles of agony that had her muscles twitching painfully.

It was to her advantage that she had until tomorrow until the others came back, but until then she still had two guards to deal with. Dr. Robert Ellis was a different story. He was still an unknown quantity in this equation. She’d have to be very careful how she proceeded.

Mikayla didn’t know what to think about him. It seemed like he was as much of a victim in all this as she was, and yet he was still to blame for the creation of what sounded like one of the most despicable drugs ever made. She decided she would try to save him if she could, but if it came down to it and he posed a threat to her and Katie’s safety, she would take him out.

Relief flooded through her when her eyes finally opened. That relief disappeared quickly at the sight of the room she was being held in. The only light was filtered through the crack at the bottom of the wooden door and from a single oil lamp on the table. The dim light cast shadows throughout the room and increased the creepy feeling that had chills running down her spine.

Yeah, she was fucked all right.

Looking around, she could tell she was in a cellar of some sort by the damp chill in the air and the stone walls that were imbedded into the dirt mixed with sheets of plywood. After a closer inspection the underground room looked like it had been structured out of an old abandoned mine shaft.

On one hand, it was good that the room wasn’t highly secure with only a door and lock keeping her inside. There were no cameras or anything that would track her movement inside. She’d have no problem busting out of there, except for the guards waiting on the other side of the door. On the other hand, the room was creepy to the extreme and she tried not to think about what had happened to the women who had been held there before her.

The room was sparse with nothing but a bed, a movable tray table, and a few machines she was hooked up to that monitored her vitals, and chains hanging from the ceiling and walls. It was a room situated for one purpose.

Torture.

Oh yeah, it was straight out of a nightmare.

Sheer dread tried to worm its way into her heart as ugly memories began to slither into her mind, terrorizing her with their debilitating oily residue. She allowed herself five long seconds of fear before she mentally slapped herself into gear.

She had to fucking get herself together and escape this hell hole.

She had to survive.

Mikayla braced herself as she heard the sound of a key entering the lock on the door and watched through slitted eyes as a man entered the room. By the look of him she guessed that it was Dr. Ellis. He was sporting a rather painful-looking black eye and various bruises that showed on his face and neck. He closed the door and walked toward her carefully, like a man who had recently been injured and was careful how he moved his body.

Yeah, he was a victim too.

“Ms. Lincoln? Are you awake?” he whispered.

Mikayla debated with herself for a moment then chose to go with her gut. She opened her eyes and stared straight back at him. Her decision paid off as he visibly relaxed. Robert was a young man, far younger looking in person than he was in his photos. It could have been because of the bruises and the beaten look on his face. Either way, Dr. Ellis was clearly not a willing participant in this madness.

“Oh, thank god. I gave you a shot of adrenalin earlier, hoping that it would help kick the other drugs out of your system faster. I noticed your limbs twitching when everyone was in here last and knew that I needed to try and get you mobile as soon as possible.”

“Why…” Mikayla began but had to swallow again before she could continue. Her throat was so dry it was difficult to speak. “Why are you helping me?”

“Here, let me give you some water.” Robert pulled a water bottle out from a pocket in his cargo pants and held it out to her. She reached out her hand, and her arm trembled at the strain. She hesitated before taking it, eyeing him cautiously.

He gave her a small smile. “It’s safe, Ms. Lincoln. It hasn’t been opened yet, but I could take a sip to show you if you don’t trust me.”

“Call me Mikayla.” The fact that she was dying of thirst outweighed her suspicion of him and she allowed him to twist off the cap of the bottle so she could roll to her side to drink from it. She took small sips that tasted like ambrosia and fought down the desire to guzzle the entire bottle.

“I’m going to have to take out your IV and umm, the catheter.”

Could this get any more embarrassing?

“Fine.” Mikayla lay back down and tried to pretend that she wasn’t bothered by the fact that a man she didn’t know was removing a tube from her as she lay naked on the bed.

“I know you probably don’t believe me, but I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Robert said as he tried to distract her while he went about the business of unhooking her from the machines. “I tried to stall them, to make sure they didn’t hurt you by requesting that I be allowed to heal you first before they…”

His voice trailed off, and he looked away. He cleared his throat. “I know you're not strong enough yet because of the drugs, but I can buy you about another hour. Then you have to try to escape.”

He moved the machines away from the bed now that she was unhooked. “The guards here are busy now, but I’m worried about what will happen when they are done checking in with the other sites and they get bored.”

That made Mikayla blink as she covered herself with the sheet again. “There are more of these places?” Her voice was cold with fury.