Still The One (Family Stone #4 Jack) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) (13 page)

Keisha nodded her agreement. “We need anything else?”

They agreed to bring back food for everyone.

“See you soon.” Shane’s deep voice echoed from the doorway. He held his arm across the doorway, and surveyed the parking lot and surrounding woods before he let Keisha exit.

“Seriously, dude?” Keisha tossed her curls. “I was in the damn Navy.”

“Can’t help it.” Shane shrugged. “Don’t care if you like it or not.”

They continued bickering as the door swung shut.

“You okay?” Jack asked Bliss.

Apparently he’d noticed that she was upset about her lack of emotional attention to Maria.

Maria, who had fallen into a light doze. Bliss was thankful that she trusted them enough to fall asleep in their presence.

She gestured to the small kitchenette bar. “So, we’ve got Maria, we’ll have the DNA results. I wish we had some way to tie him to the house.”

Jack eyed her for another moment before he accepted that she didn’t want to talk about it.

Jack took the seat next to her. His heat warmed the air and the scent of Jack surrounded her in a haze of comfort.

“We need a way to pressure him that will be so in his face that we break him.”

“Something really public.” Bliss set her computer on the kitchenette counter and booted it up so she could look on Fernandez’s website for his appearance schedule. “We know he is here locally. Let’s find out where he’ll be tomorrow.”

Jack grinned. “Hey, I have a friend who reports the local news. I bet I could get Charity to ask some pointed questions.”

Bliss’s curiosity rose as she wondered how close a friend Charity was. But before she could ask, there was a pounding at the door.

Jack strode toward the entrance to their room. “They must have forgotten something.”

“Check the security peephole first.”

Maria sat up groggily and rubbed at her eyes.

Jack shot her a look then pulled the tail of his t-shirt from his waist and put his hand around the grip of his weapon.

A strange uneasiness seized Bliss. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

Jack peered through the peephole. “No one there.”

“Jack, get away from the door.” Bliss’s voice never rose but the panic was evident. “Maria, take cover.”

She couldn’t stop the sheer terror bubbling through her. Something was really wrong. She groped in her messenger bag for her weapon.

Suddenly the door splintered around the doorknob. Jack pulled Maria to her feet and then yanked her down behind the sofa. “Stay down,” he murmured fiercely. The sharp retort of silenced rounds as they punctured the flimsy wood were the only sounds in the room besides Bliss’s frantic breath.

Bliss took cover behind the breakfast bar counter and peered around the side so she could see the doorway. Her heart bulleted in her chest. If Jack had still been standing in front of the door, he’d be full of holes right now.

Jack leveled his weapon at the doorway. “Get in the bedroom,” he ordered them both.

Blood trickled down his temple. The sight paralyzed Bliss for a minute. “Were you hit?”

“No. I’m fine.” Jack ignored the blood dripping onto his collar. He must have been hurt by flying wood slivers.

Two men burst through the door, their hands wrapped around their weapons. Bliss had seconds to process. Two men. Average height. One dark skinned, one lighter. Both wearing tan ski masks so their faces were not visible. But their appearances were ragged and desperate as if they’d been sleeping in their clothes.

After the initial barrage of bullets, the silence was deafening.

“No one move.” One of the men ordered, his voice was gruff and uneven with a hint of an accent.

Maria whimpered at the sound of his voice.

Shit. They must be the men who kidnapped her and kept her prisoner for all those years.

“How’d you find us?” Jack asked.

“Who the fuck cares?” the dark skinned one said. His gun was pointed at Bliss. “Give us the girl and we’ll let you go.”

Girl? They couldn’t possibly be talking about Maria?

The bigger, lighter skinned man held his weapon pointed at Jack and Maria. His arm was trembling.

This was a clusterfuck waiting to happen. Both the men were unsteady and close to complete meltdown.

Bliss stared at them, stared at the men responsible for Maria’s suffering. Responsible for her years of captivity. Her fear. And all the rage that Bliss had suppressed for years jetted to the surface in a burst of adrenaline.

Bliss quit cowering behind the breakfast bar and stood tall. “Leave her alone.”

“Jesus, Bliss.” Jack snarled, “Get down.”

“Forget about her,
chica
.” The smaller one’s hand trembled. “Save yourself.”

All the years of suppressing her longing for her sister, her father, hoping for her family to be whole again, the hurt, the disillusionment when the marshals had decided to keep them separated forever. Every single attempt to find them, every single denial of her request to see them, rose up in a fireball of rage. “I will not let you hurt her anymore.”

Jack shoved Maria to the floor and trying to draw both men’s attention, shouted, “Get down.”

The shout was the distraction they needed. Both men took their attention from their targets briefly. Bliss’s heart shot to her throat. Dammit Jack.

“Shoulders.” She commanded Jack and hoped he got her meaning.

Bliss practiced weekly at the Adams-Larsen indoor range. Their shots rang out simultaneously. The percussive blast was deafening in the small hotel suite.

Bliss’s shot hit her target in the shoulder joint. He reflexively pulled his trigger but the shot went wide and hit the refrigerator.

“Bliss, get down, dammit.”

Jack had hit his guy in the hand. He’d dropped the weapon and fortunately the gun didn’t go off. Both the kidnappers dropped to the floor and howled.

Jack gave his gun to Maria. “Only shoot if you have to.

Jack pulled plastic zip ties from Shane’s duffel. Bliss got up to help and he practically took her head off. “Stay behind the counter and cover me. Shoot them again if they make any move to get up.

Jack quickly restrained their arms behind their backs. And then Bliss was on the phone with Garrett. “We need medics.”

After Jack got the ties on their feet, he ripped the mask from the first man’s head. Maria stood tall and nodded. Bliss would never forget the look on her face. Pure satisfaction. “He’s the one who raped Sofia.”

Quickly Jack ripped off the other mask and Maria nodded again. “That’s them.”

Jack pulled identification from their pockets and flipped open the first man’s wallet. As he took in their names, a feral satisfaction spread through him.

They had Fernandez now.

Eleven

The confrontation was set.

The men who’d broken into the hotel room were Fernandez’s brothers. They had been on their way to make sure the house went up and saw Shane’s car leaving the two lane road. So they had followed them back to their hotel and waited until Shane and Keisha left, believing they could scare Jack and Bliss into giving up Maria.

The men had no prior arrests or illegal activity on their records. They’d been model citizens which explained how they had managed to keep Maria a secret all those years. But when they’d been confronted with their complicity in kidnapping the girls and holding Maria prisoner, they had rolled over on Fernandez. He’d managed to hold Sofia’s death over them for years.

Once they realized that Maria was communicating with the U.S. Marshals, they knew they were screwed. The marshals had managed to hold them overnight without the requisite phone calls, so Fernandez had no idea that he was going down.

Keisha had taken perfect care of Maria when they’d returned to the hotel.

Jack still wasn’t sure he’d recovered from the danger to Bliss. At random times his heart would start to beat frantically and his blood pressure would rise. He’d seen the edge of fury in her eyes when she’d gone after the Fernandez brothers. She’d scared the hell out of him.

But the case was almost over.

The U.S. Marshals were here. Jess was on the roof of the building across the street with a camera rather than her sniper rifle.

It felt as if the entire world had gone crazy. Riley, who apparently had been out of communication for several days, was home from the Philippines and had a thing with Di Lundberg. Never in a million years would he have seen that coming. Con and Ava were together. Jess and Colin. Everyone had paired off and it felt unbelievably weird.

Riley, Connor, Colin, and Shane were going to be Maria’s human wall. Ava and Keisha were on hand to rally around Maria.

Jack had decided to let Ava and Maria confront Fernandez.

Bliss was tucked away in the back of the room. She’d found the perfect vantage point to watch Fernandez get taken down. Adams-Larsen couldn’t reveal their role in the care and protection of Maria so she was well out of the limelight.

Fernandez had a town hall meeting today at the VFW specifically for the Farm Workers Association. Jack couldn’t have scripted this confrontation better if he’d tried.

Fernandez was dressed in Average José casual: Levi’s, a plaid flannel shirt, and a pair of scuffed cowboy boots. But he still had the thousand dollar buffed and shined look beneath the Wal-Mart attire.

“Scumbag,” Bliss muttered.

Jack had chosen to stay in the background with Bliss. She’d been all business, and since they’d found Maria yesterday, they’d had no time alone. Jack had coordinated with his brothers and sister while Bliss had worked with the U.S. Marshals to make sure this all went to plan.

The old hall was packed to the rafters with Fernandez’s adoring public.

This was nothing more than a glorified photo op for Fernandez. Luckily it was a slow news day everywhere else because Jack was pretty sure this surprise was going to catapult Charity into a national figure by tonight. When Jack had approached her about the scoop, she’d initially been skeptical but once he showed her the evidence, she’d jumped at the chance to ‘interview’ Fernandez.

Jack had gone to several charity events with Charity but she was hung up on her ex, so nothing ever developed, which Jack now thought was ironic. Bliss had seemed to pick up on the fact that they were a little more than friends, which was one more hurdle to overcome once he finally got her alone.

Fernandez had a wide smile on his face while he waited for Charity to conduct her interview. She reapplied her lip gloss, fluffed her hair, and ran her tongue around her teeth, looking harmless and a little bit flighty. But beneath the beauty queen exterior was a shark waiting to attack.

Jack couldn’t wait for Fernandez’s smarmy smile to disappear.

Fernandez’s expression was a practiced benevolence, as the print reporters snapped pictures. Then totally hot Charity, with her long blonde hair, sparkling blue eyes, and Southern California tan, began her interview.

Her ocean blue eyes sharpened as she pandered to his ego, mentioning all of his former accomplishments. “And how are you feeling about the upcoming Senate confirmation vote?”

“I am hopeful that the Senate will agree that as a champion of a sector of the population that is usually ignored I will have a unique and positive impact on the future of employment for all the people. And especially the people who have supported me over the last eight years.”

The crowd cheered. Whistles and catcalls echoed in the packed house.

Fernandez had perfected the politician’s wave and raised both arms to encourage the crowd to get louder.

Once the noise died down Charity tilted her head, letting her blond hair fall over one shoulder in a flirty sway, then went in for the kill. “What about the accusations that you were involved in the abduction of the four girls? The tragedy that launched your career?”

The crowd hushed.

“Now, Charity,” Fernandez sat back on the metal stool and placed his palms flat on his knees and leaned toward the crowd, all earnest, his brows crinkled in ‘concern’. “Sadly, mental illness is shoved under the rug in our country. I would like to propose that we amend the laws so that people with these illnesses are not stigmatized but can get the help they need. Ava Sanchez, the girl who made those accusations, has...problems.”

“Oh, I wasn’t talking about Ava.” Charity brought the microphone closer to her mouth, and paused for dramatic effect. That was the signal for Maria to start making her way across the stage.

Bliss grabbed his hand and squeezed tight. “This is it,” she whispered.

Maria stepped out from behind the curtains on the stage, surrounded by all four large men, and holding tightly to Ava and Keisha’s hands.

The crowd murmured, the noise growing louder with each second. Maria was still behind Fernandez but he’d taken note of the shift in the crowd’s demeanor and was fidgeting on the utilitarian stool.

“I was talking about Maria Torres,” Charity said, dropping the bomb.

Maria stepped into Fernandez’s view.

Charity turned and asked Maria, “Who was responsible for your abduction and imprisonment?”

Maria was shaking but Keisha whispered encouragement in her ear. Maria lifted her arm and pointed straight at Fernandez.

Fernandez blanched as Charity shoved the microphone back into his swarthy face. “I don’t know who this woman is but I assure you—”

Charity interrupted his denial. “DNA tests have already confirmed that this is Maria Torres who was abducted a little over eight years ago.”

The entire crowd went completely silent. “Then it’s a miracle.” Fernandez lifted his gaze toward heaven, his smile shaky and sweat beaded on his upper lip, his hand trembled as he reached out toward Maria. “Praise Jesus.”

But before he could get anywhere near her, Shane blocked his arm.

Bliss’s nails dug into Jack’s palm and her arm curled around his.

The marshals came from the other side of the stage. “José Fernandez, you are under arrest for the abduction and false imprisonment of Maria Torres.”

“Oh come now.” Fernandez tried to bluster his way out of the situation. “You’re taking the word of this...woman? She could have been anywhere. She could have run away.”