Night Moves: A Shadow Force Novel (31 page)

He didn’t see any cameras in the room. That was helpful. And the floor was half dirt under the wall. First, he would dig through until he could see and hear what was in the next room. Then he’d figure out a way to get these goddamned chains off.

He’d be ready when Crystal walked back into the room.

T
he car ride was truly terrifying—they shouldn’t have been on the road, and Teddie prayed they’d be pulled over, but since they were in a stolen van from the local electric company, no one stopped them.

The wind blew the van all over the road and she
huddled in the back in a ball, feeling the sway, the splash of water under the tires, the hard lash of rain bands as they threatened to unleash their fury at any moment. Samuel was behind the wheel, holding it tightly and cursing. His gun was tucked into his jacket and there was no way to grab it without killing both of them.

She’d have to find another way out of this, cursed herself for freezing up and letting herself be taken from Riley’s house.

She realized she should be looking out the window, trying to figure out where Samuel was taking her, but she was barely breathing. Tried to think of Kell, how he would tell her to be strong.

But someone had gotten to him.

He hasn’t let you down yet
. So now it was her turn to make good.

She would fight with everything she had.

When the van came to a stop inside a garage, she waited until the door closed out most of the sounds of the storm. They’d driven for maybe an hour, but in this weather, they might only be fifteen miles from Riley’s house.

Samuel had the gun out again, told her to “hurry the hell up,” and she climbed out of the van.

It was dark in the garage, save for the penlight Samuel held to guide them, a heavy hand around her biceps, which felt like a lead cuff sucking the energy from her.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked when he dragged her inside the house. It was dark, just a lantern on the floor, highlighting that the house was empty.
She didn’t see anyone else, but she did notice wet footprints leading across the floor.

“You got in touch with me, sweetheart, remember? Good old Uncle Samuel will save the day.” His smile was mirthless.

“You haven’t been good old uncle anything to me for a long time. You owe me an explanation.”

“So much like your father. So righteous. Everything so black and white.”

“You were never his friend. He was always smarter, better, kinder than you, and you leeched onto him in hopes you could be a quarter of the man he was.” The words were meant to seek the truth—judging by the way Samuel’s eyes flashed anger, she’d hit on it.

“I could kill you, Teddie. But I don’t think that’s what I’m going to do.” Samuel stroked a hand over his beard, a familiar gesture from her childhood, when she’d thought everything was idyllic.

“How long were you with my mother?” she asked finally, not sure if she wanted the answer.

“Forever,” he answered shortly. “We were always in love.”

“So why didn’t she marry you instead of my father?”

“I never wanted children. She did.”

Teddie’s head ached. Could she have been the reason her mother hadn’t married a man she loved, the reason Samuel had tried to ruin her father, or was this just another of his lies?

Did it really matter? Teddie needed to stop blaming herself for everything, needed to stay alive, no matter what it took.

She knew both her parents would’ve wanted that.

“I can’t believe it took your father so long to figure it all out. I took his women right from under his nose—he was too wrapped up in being a good little diplomat to notice. He was wonderful at his job. At love, not so good.”

Bastard. She went to lunge at him, but he grabbed her hard and pushed her to the ground.

“Fighting won’t help you this time.”

“What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“You’ll find out soon enough, Teddie. And this time, I’ll make sure there’s no one to stop me.

“I’m going to stop you, you bastard.”

Samuel ignored her, grabbed her arm again and pushed her down a dark staircase into a large basement with several closed doors. He opened the first one and shoved her inside—it was damp and she was cold and shivering. Samuel threw a towel at her and closed the door. She heard a lock turn even as she lunged for it, turning the handle frantically. She slammed at it with her palms until her hands ached and then she turned away and cursed. Fought the tears—her anger helped with that.

She’d have to stave off panic attacks as the basement of the house began to take on water, and she heard the house’s shutters rip off with the wind through the small windows above.

This place was nowhere near as secure as Riley’s house … but for the first time in years, something scared her more than the storm.

And then she heard it—the scratching at one of the walls, turned to see if it was some kind of creature … or something else. Still holding the towel, she walked over to where the sound was loudest, had to get down
on her knees to see the small hole that had been dug into her room.

“Kell?” she whispered, held her breath and spoke his name again.

“Teddie? Thank fucking God.”

At the sound of his voice, she breathed a deep sigh of relief. “He told me you were dead. I knew he was lying.”

“Are you okay? Did Crystal hurt you?”

“I’m okay. It was Samuel who took me.”

A pause, and then, “Well, Crystal’s here too. Is there anything around you that you can use as a weapon?”

“I don’t think so … it’s pretty bare in here. Just a plastic water bottle.”

“Are you chained?”

“No.” She swallowed hard, rubbed her face with the towel and then wrapped it around herself to try to get warm. “What does Crystal want?”

Kell didn’t answer her, instead slipped a thin piece of metal that looked like it had been ripped off a doorjamb through the hole. “Take this. Don’t let anyone see it. Use it if you need to.” He paused, then said, “Go for the carotid on the side of the neck. If you can’t, go for the eyes. The throat. Anyplace soft. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” she whispered, then she said it louder. “I’ll do whatever it takes to get me back to you.”

“Good girl.”

C
rystal already knew we were with Teddie. It wouldn’t be a stretch for him to track me through
Grier in order to hook up with Chambers and his men—and in doing so, he knew he’d cause enough chaos to keep us rattled.” Reid had spent the better part of the morning rolling that around in his brain and was damned pissed about it.

Now, on the phone with Dylan and Cam, the men were putting it all together.

“Check your phone,” Cam told him.

“We’ve been using throwaways since Crystal came on the scene,” Reid confirmed. “I checked my phone—nothing’s been planted.”

“Vivi checked your number too. Seems to be fine,” Dylan confirmed. “You weren’t tracked going in or out of Mexico.”

“Definitely not by border patrol.” Reid ran a hand through his hair, looked around the dingy motel room and thought about going back to the hospital to spend more time with Grier. “We were never sure who planted the bomb in Mexico, not until Grier confirmed Crystal knew the address.”

“He was there when it went off, the fucker,” Dylan muttered.

“He bugged the truck, followed us out of Mexico, found our address in Texas and watched us take off in separate directions.” Reid drummed his fingers on the small table he sat at, with a view of the street through the partially opened blinds. “He was able to follow me back here with no problem, and he was able to track me through Grier.

“And if he didn’t know exactly where Kell was before, Chambers did,” Reid said grimly, and dammit, he’d handed that intel off. “If Crystal grabbed a private plane with Chambers right after he fought with
me, he could’ve landed close by and driven the rest of the way in. If The Weather Channel can move around during a hurricane, Crystal certainly can too. We’ve got to get in there.”

“We’re on it, Reid.”

“I’m getting on a plane tonight,” he said. “And I’m going in no matter what.”

He had a ticket booked out of a Texas airport for later that day—he’d fly as close to the hurricane zone as he could, and walk the rest of the way if he had to.

Grier was getting sprung that afternoon, later than she’d first been told, according to Jack. So far, she hadn’t used the number he gave her, and he was planning on forcing the issue, putting her on a plane and helping her to disappear.

It was the least he could do.

He had no doubt she’d already used the other information he’d given her regarding Chambers’s overseas bank accounts, which Vivi had emailed to him after an exhaustive search of Chambers’s assets. That plus the pictures and Teddie’s testimony should put to rest any doubt that Samuel Chambers had been behind the kidnapping scheme.

When Reid stopped by the hospital, they told him she’d already been released, which he found odd.

“If you hurry, you can probably catch her,” one of the nurses told him. “She was just being taken down on the north elevator.”

He took the steps two at a time, went around the front of the building and spotted her. She was getting out of the wheelchair that hospitals always made their patients ride out in, for liability issues. Jack was at her side, looking around for any trouble.

Without warning, a black truck sped around the corner, taking it almost on two wheels, the screech of tires making everyone jump back and Reid jump forward, because the car was racing close to where Grier was standing.

Too close.

He yelled her name, but he wasn’t close enough. She’d turned to look at the truck too and he wanted her to run the hell away.

Instead, she stood there as if paralyzed, rooted to the spot.

The shots rang out as he raced to get to her but the truck blocked his view for a long moment that seemed to spiral on forever. His own gun was drawn, and as the truck pulled away, he took a few shots at the tires and windows to try to stop it, losing interest quickly when he spotted Grier on the ground.

Grier
. God, no. Just fucking no.

Jack was kneeling next to her, talking into his cell phone, presumably calling the police.

When he saw Reid, he got up and tried to hold him back as the emergency staff came out with a stretcher.

Reid pushed Jack away, knelt as near to her as he could get without interfering with the doctors and nurses swarming around her, or maybe his knees buckled and he fell, but it didn’t matter. Her eyes were glassy, breathing shallow, and the blood … my God, so much blood.

Jack was still trying to remove him, and he fought to get closer, vaguely heard, “Let them do their job, Reid. They’ve got to get her inside.”

“We’re losing her!” one of the doctors called. “I’m starting compressions.”

Reid was half off the ground now, met Jack’s eyes and saw a fear he knew was reflected in his own.

“She’ll be okay,” Jack told him, like he had to say it out loud in order to believe it. “She’s so strong.”

Reid opened his mouth but nothing came out. His throat was tight and this was all too goddamned familiar.

And he was so goddamned responsible in the first place.

The doctor and nurses were working frantically now—CPR continued as Grier was lifted onto a stretcher and wheeled inside.

Instead of trying to keep him away, Jack tugged him inside the hospital, following the triage to the ER, even though Reid didn’t want to go. They followed the maze of hallways until they got to the double doors the stretcher had just been pushed through. A nurse pulled the curtain around her and he and Jack stood there until another nurse came up to them and asked if they could please wait outside the working area.

“No,” Jack told her, and she started. Reid’s body was barely functioning. All he could do was stand there, propped against the wall, staring as if he could will Grier’s heart to keep beating.

The shots had gone right into her chest—he’d seen the dark holes through the white buttoned-down shirt she’d been wearing. Two of them.

Dark holes
. Not skin. Bullet-fucking-proof vest.

Fuck.

He glanced at Jack again, and this time his numbness was for a different reason. He pushed off from the wall and made his way out of the hospital to
where the police were mulling around the spot Grier had gone down. Got close enough to see the blood. To smell it.

Instead of going back inside, he made it his mission to put as much distance between himself and this hospital as possible.

I
t was all a blur and this time Grier didn’t have any drugs to take away the pain. She was being wheeled somewhere, totally covered, and she felt tears slide down her cheeks.

But her arms were strapped down, so she couldn’t do anything but let them run freely.

After what seemed like an eternity, the stretcher she was on was being collapsed and she was being lifted into the back of a van, just like she’d been told she’d be.

It was only when the van began to move that the bag she’d been in was unzipped. It was unsettling enough to have to play dead, but zipped inside a body bag … well, the ultimate irony of that wasn’t lost on her.

“We’re clear,” the man she’d first met yesterday in her hospital room told her. He was a marshal like her … like she had been, she supposed, and didn’t dwell on that, because right now the thought would kill her faster than any bullet.

The straps around her arms and legs were unfastened and she sat up, too fast for the broken ribs and the new pain where the bullets had hit her.

They’d been real, because they needed to leave casings.

God, Reid’s face … she hadn’t wanted him to be there, but she’d known he would be. That was part of the plan—they’d even waited for him. She supposed it would help him to move on … she just hoped she could too.

And still, the card with the message and the phone number he’d left her was tucked inside her shoe.

“Come on, I’ll help you get this stuff off.”

She was still wearing the bloody clothing—some of it, at least, because the doctors had cut through it to get to her. But they’d left enough on so that the bulletproof vest was still covered.