When Baron went out into the hallway, the housekeeping cart was a few doors down. Something was up with Nessa. Hopefully it really was simply being put out by the towel situation, but when he’d first heard her call his name, no, yell his name, he had briefly feared for his life. At the door however, she hadn’t been really mad at him, just very concerned about the towels and insisted he solve the problem in an exact manner.

Baron paused at the cart to consider all angles.

Something wasn’t right. This was a wild goose chase.

Short of the housekeeping cart, Baron turned around and hurried back to the room.

“Nessa,” he called as he slid the key card in and opened the door. “I couldn’t find any towels.”

She didn’t answer.

Baron knocked on the bathroom door. “Nessa?”

Something was definitely wrong. He tried the handle and found it locked.

“Nessa if you don’t answer I have to break in, so stand back.”

Silence.

Baron turned his shoulder toward the door and hit it, keeping the handle in his free hand. His foot would be more efficient, but if Nessa was in front of the door for whatever reason, he didn’t want to send it flying against her.

The door didn’t budge under his shoulder so he took a step back and kicked it next to the handle. Wood splintered near the handle and catch and the door flew inward, slamming against the bathtub.

The bag of purchases from the surf shop was lying in the center of the floor. There was no sign of Nessa anywhere. So how was the door locked? Delay tactic. That was the only explanation. Four fresh towels were folded and stacked on the shelf, so that instinct had been correct. Which meant something was seriously amiss.

Baron’s hand reached to the back of his shorts for his gun before he realized it was stowed in his Escalade on the other side of the border. He inspected the bathroom to see if there were any hidden exits that she’d been taken out of.

Where had their cover failed so thoroughly for someone to go to the efforts of abducting her? On the beach they’d been speaking openly, but he was watching the whole time for signs of audio surveillance and they’d been moving, which would make spying on them nearly impossible. Unless the surf shop had planted a bug and had listened to the whole thing!

Whatever had happened, Nessa hadn’t left through the bathroom.

Stepping back into the room cautiously, he scanned the room. There was no sign of struggle. He’d only been out of the room for ten seconds, maybe fifteen. He felt like he was in the middle of an unsolvable logic problem.

No, it felt like Nessa was too good to be true. He’d been dreaming or hallucinating her and she’d gone up in smoke.

He had to find her, no matter how impossible it was to gather a genie out of the air and bring her back to real life.

“Stop that,” he told himself. “There’s a real answer here, and you’re going to find it.”

Baron scanned the room again and noticed a black button on the pad of paper sitting on the desk. The paper had a few words scrawled on it.

I can’t believe you would do this. I’ll prove myself to you … Nessa

Baron didn’t have the slightest idea what he’d done. It had to have something to do with the small device sitting on the note. He bent to examine it without touching it. It was a short cylinder, the size of four stacked nickels with a small convex dome on the top. Whatever it was, he’d never seen it before in his life.

Maybe it was a bug or a tracker, possibly from the surf shop. Or the whole room could be bugged, which would have to have happened before they even arrived. This had been placed in the bathroom, and if the bathroom was bugged the rest of the room was for sure. Unless it was a camera, then unfortunately the bathroom would be an expected, though disgusting, choice of placement.

Using the pen, Baron upended the device. In the center on the bottom was a hole, but it didn’t appear to be a lens.

Nessa had certainly handled this with her fingers, so there was no point in trying to keep it clean or prevent any harm to himself. Baron picked it up and inspected the hole. It looked like a dock for a pin.

“It’s a security tag,” he said with utter certainty. “To prevent shoplifting.”

Oh no, no, no. To Nessa it had to have looked like a tracker. She’d found it in the new clothes and assumed Baron had planted it at some point today, right after promising to treat her like an adult and a partner.

This was bad. She’d been angry enough to distract him long enough to … escape. The mere thought of that word churned his stomach which was already in upheaval. According to the note, she was going to prove that she was capable enough to work without him. That meant she was capable of attempting anything, as long as it was dangerous.

The safety harness was off, but Nessa was determined to fly through the air anyway, whether it was Baron on the other side of the trapeze or not.

Everything had been going so perfect. They should be sitting on the beach or on the water trying to surf. This mission had gone from meeting every objective to potentially catastrophic in the course of two minutes.

Baron had dealt with failed missions before and he could deal with this one.

The back door. He went to the sliding door and found it closed but unlocked. Their small patio led straight to the sand, and of course, Nessa was nowhere in sight. He pictured the Mexican style white shirt they’d bought at the border. When she’d put it on she’d suddenly seemed so carefree, beautiful, and willing to listen to him tell her so.

“Focus, man.”

He dialed her number as he scanned the beach. Straight to voicemail.

There was no sign of anyone in a white shirt like hers anywhere on the beach. He thought of her long, blonde hair and continued to scan. She would be moving away from him, either in a hurry or trying to not act suspicious.

No one on the beach met that description.

Baron looked down at the ground. Tracks of all shapes and sizes led off in every direction. Maybe Creed Parker could track her if he knew what flip flops she’d been wearing, but Creed’s tracking skills didn’t do Baron any good in the here and now.

That didn’t mean his buddies couldn’t help in other ways. He did a quick inventory of their specialties that might come in useful.

In addition to tracking, Creed could fight better than any of his SEAL group. If this mission came to hand to hand combat, they were in way too deep. Blaine was a sniper and negotiation specialist, but they needed to end this way before reaching that point. He needed to start with less extreme ideas.

No one Baron had ever met knew more about the quirks and customs of different parts of the world as Maddox. He was a walking, talking world travel guide. Working for Sutton, so close to Tijuana, maybe Maddox knew something about this place.

While Logan was an explosive expert, he also had top notch hacking skills. It seemed like a stretch for him to hack into every security camera in the city and look for her, but Baron would give him a try, see what he came up with. His gut said technology wasn’t the answer. He needed to get into her head and use psychology. Psychology and probability, since there was no way to guarantee where he would find her.

That meant Jace. He might make a difference on this one with his probability method. Jace and Maddox together, along with what Baron knew about her. Working together, they might just have better odds than going door to door.

“Oh, Nessa, you brave, careless woman, you. What have you done?”

No matter what it was, Baron would find her. Never had a mission been this important.