Lie with Me (32 page)

That, he was sure of.

CHAPTER

18

G
et her dressed and ready.”

Olivia struggled, but they shot her up again with some kind of narcotic. Happy juice. A low enough level that she could concentrate, but if they did it enough, she could easily become addicted. Which was probably their intention.

They’d been doing that, hourly. She hadn’t seen Gabriel for a while, but any sense of time was slipping away, and she didn’t dare ask about him. She was so damned tired—tied to a straight-backed chair, her arms bared for the shots.

She could’ve kicked so they’d miss, bust her vein, but she still had plenty for them to find. And so she stayed still and let the drug burn through her until the man with the goatee spoke again.

“You’re going to work for us.”

“I don’t work for terrorists.” She spat at him, jerked herself hard against the bonds.

“Ah, she’s still feisty. We’ll break that out of her.”

Break that out of her
. Oh, God, where were they taking her?

The panic must’ve shown, even through her drug-filled haze.

“Don’t worry, Doc, you’ll get to use your surgical skills a lot where you’re going—you won’t get rusty at all.”

T
he plane had boarded on time. They’d caught the last flight out of New York for the foreseeable future—the two later ones had been canceled, as they’d hoped, due to weather on Minnesota’s end, which would make things all the more interesting when they arrived.

The five of them traveled in first class, because it was easier—kept them near the exits and able to watch the passengers boarding. Once they’d landed in Bemidji, they’d driven several hours and secured their motel room outside Crookston. Cam left Zane and Sky behind while he and Dylan and Riley gathered the weapons they couldn’t bring on the plane.

Now they rode out around the possible DMH house. It was just before dusk and Cam forced his thoughts away from Sky. She was as safe as he could get her, barring being with him.

It was time to make sure she stayed safe for good.

Cam didn’t ever go into a situation cold when he could help it. Recon as a survival tool had been drilled into his head for a long time—and Dylan knew better than to argue.

Although he did. “If they make us …”

“They won’t.”

Dylan shook his head and muttered as he tapped the steering wheel. Riley remained silent in the back, save for her readying the various guns they’d gotten from a friend of an associate Dylan knew.

“It’s up ahead—we’re going past now,” Dylan said, maintaining the same speed as they did, the road about a quarter of a mile away from the house, which was built on a large piece of land and set back far enough not to be bothered by traffic.

Not that this town would have much of that. The house was in one of the more desolate and isolated sections of the already-small-enough-to-be-off-the-map town.

Dylan had taken the rental plates off the SUV and replaced them with local ones he’d borrowed from the motel lot, and he and Cam were wired to each other—and to Zane back in the motel, in case they got into trouble.

Bringing Zane in would be the last resort. Cam would make sure it would not come to that.

“This is the closest house to Elijah’s mother’s place—two miles out,” Dylan said, pulling down the long driveway to get a better view. At least the service road and the main road to this house had been plowed.

“Looks deserted,” Cam confirmed when they pulled behind the old barn and got out to view Elijah’s suspected house from this safe distance. “There’s no way to do a distract and grab—we’ll have to go in. There’s a mile worth of these woods.” He gestured to the left of the house as he studied the map on his GPS. “And an open field to the right. I’ll do the rest of the recon on foot.”

The plan was in motion.

The walk in the woods did Cam some good. Freezing cold, rough terrain, and his mind totally focused on the task ahead, he finally felt back in his element. Mission-ready.

He checked in with Dylan periodically while he moved as quietly as he could. The woods were dense, which helped, and he’d dressed in his cammies to blend. Carried a rifle too, because if noticed, he would pretend to be a lost hunter.

Finally, he was close enough to study the house without aid of binoculars. Three stories and small windows with bars visible, indicating a basement—pushing up through the snow-covered ground—most likely where they would be holding someone. He only hoped they’d brought both Gabriel and the doctor to the same location.

This was the closest known DMH location to New York—the easiest place to bring the doctor. And the most private of all the DMH houses Riley had given to them.

“Cam, you still with me?” Dylan’s voice crackled in his ear.

He was just about to answer when he heard a scream. A woman’s scream.

“What the fuck was that?” Zane demanded, breaking into the conversation from back at the motel, via headset. “Who’s screaming?”

“Gotta be the doctor,” Dylan said.

“Dammit.” Cam swore under his breath as the screams got louder, more frantic. He needed to get a visual without breaking cover, so he dropped to his belly and commando-crawled the rest of the way to the clearing.

“Can you get a visual?” Dylan asked, and dammit, Cam got more of one than he’d wanted—saw two men strong-arming a woman who matched the picture Zane had brought from the doctor’s apartment.

“It’s her,” he confirmed, heard Dylan curse softly.

She was still screaming when he lost sight of her. They took her behind the dilapidated barn behind the house. It took everything he had not to go after her, but he knew that was a death wish. He forced himself to sit still as he listened to her yells, until they were suddenly cut short and replaced by the sounds of a motor.

Moments later, he caught sight of a Cessna cruising across the clearing, readying for takeoff.

The screams had grown silent. “She’s on the plane.”

“Plane? There’s no airport around here,” Dylan said.

They didn’t need one—just enough space for a landing strip, and there was plenty of flat surface around this place. He watched helplessly as the plane lifted off, knew there was no way to help the doctor right now. They were undermanned and didn’t have the resources to take the plane down safely.

“She’s gone for now,” he said flatly. “We’ll get intel on where they’re taking her, and we’ll find her. You and Riley head this way.”

“We’re coming to you now, Cam,” Dylan told him.

Cam finished his assessment of the house, ruthlessly pushing the screams of the doctor from his mind, even as Zane continued to swear in his ear.

No cars were visible, although there was a two-car garage with tinted windows. On the second floor of the house, he saw men passing by the window—two or three of them. None outside, as far as he could see.

Dylan and Riley came up behind him within fifteen minutes, weapons strapped on and at the ready.

“Should we try to take one of them alive?” Dylan asked.

Cam shook his head. “We’ll take these men out and then go after the others once we’ve secured Gabriel—and Sky.”

“We’ll gas it, get the men to come out and pick them off,” Dylan agreed. “Better than going in blind, since we don’t have the house’s floor plans.”

Cam’s nerves were on edge, his body primed and ready for a fight—for this fight.

No matter what else happened, he needed Creighton’s cooperation. It was the only plan that could keep Sky safe. All her father had to do was agree with it.

Even in the dark, he could see how close Dylan kept to Riley. And he knew just how personal all this was for her, could practically hear the wheels in her mind turning.

But Dylan was cool and calm—this wasn’t personal for him. This was all business, and both Cam and Riley needed to remember that, to get their minds focused. In the game.

It was time.

L
ast night in bed, Cam had asked her what she wanted to do when all of this was over. When she was a year out of surgery and given the okay to be less cautious.

Sky couldn’t think of anything except being with him. And now she was beginning to rethink what she’d asked of him, of all of them.

But she couldn’t get the pictures out of her mind—of her father pushing her on a swing, sitting in the audience of her first dance recital … surprising her on her thirteenth birthday.

She pushed all those thoughts aside when Zane took on a sharp tone, but he wasn’t speaking to her. No, he’d kept the headset on, connecting him to Cam and Dylan, but nothing had happened until now.

By the look on Zane’s face, something finally had.

In seconds, she was up from the bed where she’d curled, attempting to watch mindless TV. “What’s wrong?”

“They’re okay,” he said roughly; he had covered the mike before he spoke to her. “Cam, Dylan and Riley are fine.”

“Someone’s not.” Her father?

He pushed the headset off slightly, and although his voice was angry, it wasn’t directed at her. “There was a plane that took off from a field behind the house. Olivia was dragged on it.”

“Wasn’t there anything they could’ve done?”

Zane pressed his lips together and she saw in his eyes that, yes, there might’ve been something, but Cam and Dylan and Riley had to make a choice.

And she’d won, at Liv’s expense. “This is my fault.”

“It’s not,” Zane told her. “Look, there was no way to get to her—they were on foot. They would’ve been too vulnerable. And I know my brother—he won’t stop looking for Dr. Strohm. I won’t let him.”

He stopped, as if not wanting to upset her, but she could see
he
was visibly upset when he’d talked about Olivia.

“She’s strong. Really strong,” Sky said, trying to convince herself.

“Then she’ll get through it. And so will you,” Zane told her, and he pushed the headset back into place so he could help make sure of that.

CHAPTER

19

A
fter she threw the canister of liquid gas through the window, Riley moved around to the back door and kicked it open with a booted foot, shattering the wood from its hinges.

“Nice job,” she heard Dylan say from behind her, and they both tugged on the masks they’d brought to protect them from the gas. He gave her the signal and she stepped forward, into a house that seemed frozen by time, as if none of the decor had ever been updated.

Cam remained outside, watching the perimeter and waiting for their all-clear signal.

She could see right through the small living room into the even smaller kitchen. “All clear,” she called, even as the pounding of footsteps greeted them overhead.

They didn’t have to go upstairs, as the men were headed quickly down the staircase toward them. Stumbling, actually, hands swiping their tearing eyes, hacking up smoke and acrid air from their lungs.

Riley didn’t recognize either man. She lunged to take the first one down the stairs with a kick to the gut. He fell forward and rolled and she moved with him, allowing Dylan to grab the other man as he arrived at the foot of the stairs.

Her man was down, but not out, and when he lunged for her, she chopped the gun neatly out of his hand with the butt of hers and put two bullets into his chest. Fast and easy.

Why was all of this so easy?

Dylan had already taken down the man who’d been coming for him and was now looking around the house for clues to anything.

“Trap?” she asked, her voice sounding muffled through the mask.

“They weren’t ready for us,” he pointed out, and then headed up the stairs for a final sweep. She followed close behind, the two of them searching the three bedrooms easily. Two were empty.

The third had been turned into a makeshift surveillance room, with bridge tables and a coffeepot, a television and surveillance cameras for both the road and what appeared to be two basement cells.

One of them was empty. The only thing left behind was a pair of blue hospital scrubs that looked to have been cut. Riley could see that they were streaked with blood. “The doctor.”

“She was alive enough to yell for help. She’s a tough one,” Dylan said, but his tone was grim.

She followed his gaze to the second monitor—an identical cell, with a man standing by the door as if listening to something. To them. “Cam, get in here.”

Cam was by their side in seconds.

“Is that him?” Dylan asked after he’d pulled his mask off. Riley did the same, pushing it to her forehead. She could still smell the chemicals from the gas, but its effects, short-lived to begin with, were long gone, thanks to the air whistling through the window the gas canister had broken.

“That’s him. Cover me.” Cam was down the stairs before either of them could respond.

It was only then that they heard the crunch of a car on the icy driveway, to the left of the house. Riley peered out the window and saw six men getting out of a truck.

“We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” Dylan muttered.

“Or we stay and fight. Maybe get some intel.” She pointed to the monitor showing Cam kicking a door in.

“It’s not the time, Ri. But there will be one. I promise you that.”

She nodded, and then blurted out, “I love you, Dylan. So much.”

His eyes lit up. “You had to tell me that now, when there’s a small army headed this way to try to kill us?”

“There didn’t seem to be a better time.”

He kissed her, then, “Love you, Ri. Now, let’s get the hell out of here, so you can keep telling me that for a long time to come.”