CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

They killed him! God, they killed him!

Shea sat alone in the dark, scared for her life, and shivering with her heart crushed. Her wrists were bound behind her back with a sturdy Flexi-Cuff, the kind police and military the world over used to subdue their prisoners. It worked.

She’d kicked like hell when the man who’d abducted her took her boots and dragged her out of the vehicle by her ankles, scraping her butt and shoulder blades against the gravel. She’d bucked and cursed him when he tossed her down several stairs and into an earthen cellar. But there was no way to fight the chill of an Irish midnight. Or the despair welling up inside.

It didn’t matter now if she lived or died anyway. What was the use? In a little over two years, she’d lost both Cheyenne and Eric. She’d seen the hit to his head, and the blood. She’d watched Eric fall while trying to protect her even though he should’ve been in bed. He would’ve still been safe in America if not for—me.

Shea gulped against the tears still pouring down her face. The spiral of grief she’d been caught in had finally delivered her to this lowest point. She’d only been lower once before, on that beach when she’d thought she’d seen Cheyenne.

Even now she wasn’t sure she hadn’t. A mind played terrible tricks when a person was at the end of their rope, but that beautiful trick was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of trick. It wasn’t happening once more. Cheyenne’s sweet ghost wouldn’t suddenly appear in this cellar like the ghost of Christmas Past. There was no happily ever after. Only regret.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered to her child and husband. “This is all my fault.”

She’d expected threats or bragging once Abdul-Mutaal had finally caught her, but the creep hadn’t spoken a single word. Not even a grunt once he’d forced her to the floor of that car. Neither had the driver.

Throughout the hour-long drive, Mideastern music had played loudly, probably to mask the traffic noises. She’d expected to be beaten or beheaded at the first chance, but the man in the backseat, whom she assumed was Mutaal, had only trapped her to the floor with his boot on her neck. Nothing else.

There was no crack around the door to let in a glimmer of light. No windows. After all she’d shared with Eric, sitting alone in this concrete prison seemed her just reward. To die in the dark with a splitting headache from crying.

Her heart hurt, making little sucking pains in her chest like it couldn’t catch its breath, either. Like a fish out of water, gasping for air. A heart out of time. A dying soul without its mate.

Shea bowed her chin to her chest and let the bitterness of her mistakes drip down her cheeks. Life had played an awfully cruel trick on her. It let her think she’d been forgiven, then dashed her hopes in a most cruel comeuppance.

The scene back at the cottage replayed. Shea hadn’t been able to let go of Eric’s hand until he’d shaken her off and yelled, “Run, Shea. Go! Now!”

He’d wasted his last breath. On me. At the end of everything, he’d thought only of—me.

“He wanted me to live,” she told the spirit of her daughter. “You wanted me to live that day on the beach, too. That other little girl only brought you to me, but I know it was a message from you. You’re who saved me.”

Shea stilled.

“You wanted me to live,” she told her dead husband. To simply give up now because everything seemed bleak was an insult to his final gift. It seemed an impossible feat to hold on to hope in such awful circumstances, but Eric had laid down his life to save her.

“I’m going to live,” she whispered to herself with no hope of rescue. No hope but—me.

Shea wiped the tears away on her arms and shoulder. Her captors had already made a mistake when they’d given her too much time to think. Her sorrow distilled into anger. Then revenge. If she couldn’t have the people she loved in her life, at least she could avenge them. The pig that’d murdered Eric was going to pay.

Pushing to her knees, then one foot, Shea lifted to her feet. Sitting there and waiting to die was a waste of whatever time she had left. Cheyenne and Eric had rescued her for a reason, and if they believed in her...

There had to be a way out of this cellar.

Bumping along with nothing but her bicep and butt for tactile sensation, she found that three of the four walls in the cellar were concrete. The other was a slanted wooden door, five steps up. What did Murphy like to say? Time’s a-wasting? No shit.

Shea repeated the drill, using the side of her face as well as her body to feel for that one flaw in this prison. There has to be one. No plan is foolproof.

Again, she came up with nothing. The concrete walls were smooth and cold. The stairs rough sawn wood. Panic flared. Time was not only wasting, but running out.

On her third attempt, she rubbed harder against the walls, and she moved slower, using every exposed cell and nerve as she turned herself into one giant sensor, carefully molding her flesh to the divots and textures of the concrete in hopes of—anything. At last, near the door, something dug into her bicep. She jerked away from it, thrilled to be bleeding if it meant freedom.

Backing into the doorjamb, she lifted both bound hands to feel for that sharp thing again. A slender piece of what felt like rusted metal met her fingertips. Less than a half-inch of it extended past the wooden jamb, but the top edge was sharp. It just might work.

The awkward angle of the slanted door was problematic. Shea had to stand backward on the highest step, bent at the waist with her bound arms raised behind her, leaning forward to reach the metal. Off balance and dizzy with nothing to focus on, but—well, nothing—she shifted her butt against the door to anchor herself.

Hooking the plastic cuff over the sharp edge, she tilted forward and backward just enough to work the Flexi-Cuff over the jagged slip of metal. It took a while, and she kept her ears tuned on high alert for any sounds of her captors returning.

At last, the cuff gave, a blessed relief to her numb shoulders, shaking legs, and aching back. Encouraged at this small success, she straightened and tossed the plastic restraint aside. The cramped cellar didn’t seem so cold anymore.

After another nervous search of walls, floors, and ceiling—with fingers and hands this time—she knew exactly how to escape. The wooden joists overhead were reachable. Nearly a foot deep, the space between the parallel boards was a good foot wide, the perfect nook for a woman with no feminine curves to hide between. On top of that good fortune, the space over the cellar door offered a six-inch shelf above the doorjamb. All she had to do was climb up there and keep quiet until someone came along and let her out.

Then, if her luck held out, she could get the drop on him. Or them. Shea dropped to her hands and knees. A slim chance was still a chance, damn it. What did Eric always say? Keep on keeping on? Good enough.

Clinging to his USMC mantra, she fluttered her fingers over the floor to locate the discarded cuff. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it might make the difference between life and death. Got it. Great!

Satisfied she’d done all she could, she stuck the cuff into her pants pocket. Using the overhead joist for leverage, she pulled one knee onto it, then braced her body into the long narrow space that would serve as her final hiding place. Her one slim chance.

Tucked in tight, she laced what was left of the Flexi-Cuff through her fingers with the sharp edges sticking out. It wasn’t a knife, and she couldn’t kill anyone with it, but it could scratch a face or an eyeball. That was all this insane escape plan was about anyway. Buying time. Getting a head start. After all, I’m good at running.

If all she accomplished tonight was to escape, she promised herself that somehow, Abdul-Mutaal would die, and she—Mrs. Eric Reynolds—would keep on keeping on.

It was Elsa who elbowed past Eric and Murphy to deal with the grotesque discovery. Lifting the rope tied around Mikkelson’s forehead, she set it inside a large, zip-lock plastic bag and marched back into the cottage.

Eric stepped aside and let her enter. She went straight to the refrigerator, opened the sliding freezer drawer, and deposited the grisly package. Turning, she peeled the gloves off her hands and dropped them into the trash receptacle. With a cocky toss of her blonde head, she dusted her palms together and stared the men down. “There. That’s done. We know two things. We have substantial evidence and Abdul-Mutaal doesn’t keep trophies. He meant that little display to shock you. Did it, boys?”

Well, yeah. It took Eric a minute to shake the shock and horror off. Jordan had fled to the head, umm, bathroom, and, at the moment, Eric couldn’t come up with one good reason why the Navy used head for any-damned-thing.

“What now?” Elsa prodded, her brows lifted. “Anyone else need to puke their guts up or can we get down to business?”

Damn. She was heartless in a sneaky, smart way. Eric recognized another black operator when he saw one. “Who’d you work for before you became a nurse? The IRA?”

She lifted one brow. “Now why would you think I worked with them?”

“Because you’re good.” Too good. The Irish coat of arms, the gold harp against a dark blue shield on the wall behind her, suddenly took on a different meaning. As did the tricolor flag of green, white, and orange displayed above the front door of this quaint little cottage. “What exactly does that mean to you?” he asked, pointing to the Gaelic inscribed below the flag.

Murphy slapped Eric’s back. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to, son.”

“Fe Mhoid Bheith Saor.” The Gaelic rolled off Elsa’s tongue without hesitation. “Sworn to be Free.” Something about that tilt to her chin declared it was more than just a national motto to Elsa. It sounded like her Pledge of Allegiance.

Eric nodded, not wanting to get her hackles up. He was plenty touchy about how some people in the States treated his flag, too. “You Irish Army or Air Corps?”

Her stance softened. “Neither.”

“G2?” Eric couldn’t resist baiting her, just a little. The G2 was the Irish Army’s top-secret intelligence section during World War II. Their claim to fame grew out of their uncanny detective skills at locating and arresting German Nazi spies. He was pretty sure the G2 was still around.

Elsa winked, her way of neither admitting nor denying.

And suddenly, they were four operators—if Jordan could stop hugging the porcelain.

Eric took a seat at the kitchen table, his head pounding like a mother and his stomach as queasy as his buddy’s. “Listen up. We know where Carlson is. Mother will keep an eye on him, but I doubt Ember will find Shea soon enough with her facial rec program. It’s up to us.”

He rubbed the side of his head where he’d been grazed. Elsa must have taken that as a hint. She kicked back into nursing mode and retrieved what she needed to clean and bandage the wound. She offered him several tablets and ordered him to, “Swallow.”

He tossed his head back and downed the tablets dry while she cleansed and re-bandaged his wounds. “Our only hope is what Mother finds on the satellite images. We wait, unless…” he turned to Murphy, “you know something I don’t. You’re the one who’s always prepared. Where do you think Abdul took her?”

Jordan joined them at the table. A little shaky. A little embarrassed. But functional.

Murphy pursed his lips. “I don’t think they can get her off the island unless they have a private plane. I’ve got people watching all the airstrips. They move her, I’ll know.”

“And?” Eric pushed.

Elsa intervened. “And I’ve alerted all Irish Defence Forces. They already have eyes in the air and on the ground searching for her.”

Eric nodded. “Good to know. Thanks.”

“And if Mutaal intends to punish her the way he did her college buddies, he’d need the location and the privacy.”

Eric growled. Not much help, Murph. Brutality happened anywhere and everywhere. Even Catholic churches and rectories weren’t safe anymore.

“But,” Elsa said as she took her place at the table, “I don’t believe Mutaal abducted her just to hurt her. Somehow, he’s made the connection that Shea is Finn. He wants her for a specific reason, which is why he killed to get at her in the first place. I find it unreasonable that he’d kill her the moment he got his hands on her.”

That made scary, painful sense.

“So you need to tell us,” Murphy slanted his body to Eric. “What has Shea been up to the last two years since she ran away? I know about the booze and the hacking. She’s got a talent the folks at Quantico would love to get their hands on. We’ve already dealt with her friend Bagani back at Ashford. What else?”

God. What else was there? Eric shook his head. He didn’t know, but he knew someone who might. “Give me the house phone.”

Mother picked up on the first ring. “Yes, Eric?”

“You taught Shea to hack,” he said pointblank. “Is there any way you shared files or something? Can you tell me where she is?”

Dead silence.

“Damn it, Mother! I know you taught her how to get into bank accounts. Talk to me. I need to know everyone she hacked and who she stole from. Can you help me or not?”

“Aww shit!” was the last thing Eric expected to come of out of Mother’s mouth. “She wouldn’t have.”

“She wouldn’t have what?” His heart rate spiked. What the hell had Shea done now?

“Hold,” Mother barked before he had a chance to stop her.

She put me on hold! Now? At the worst time of my life!

She came back on the line before he could mentally curse her. “She only stole from Bagani, but Eric. I’m scanning some of her files now, you know, the ones she sent me for safe keeping. I swear, that wife of yours has a data bank for a brain. Anyway, my new anti-virus software picked up a piece of code she probably didn’t notice she had, not with her limited operating system. It’s a tracking malware that replicates itself. Anytime she activated an executable file, whoever infected her computer with that malware, knew precisely where she was, and what she was doing.”

“Who?” he asked. “Abdul-Mutaal?”

“There’s no way to tell. Let me try something though. Just... hold... on…”

Eric buried his forehead in his hand, not sure what hurt worse, his head, his broken ribs, or his heart. That malware might explain how Mutaal had caught up with Shea. He’d zeroed in on her at Murphy’s home in Cashel, then again outside of Ashford. Once he had a visual, he knew who Finn was, and any covert operator could’ve followed Murphy’s truck. Possibly by air. The United States military wasn’t the only worldwide force with state of the art technology.

“Hang on another… second…” Mother murmured.

I am so fucking tired of hanging on.

“I’ve hacked, umm, excuse me, I’ve broken his algorithm. He’s got a—damn, I’m good….”

Adrenaline laced with angst overloaded Eric. Just tell me!

“Almost... got it…”

His fist needed to hit something!

“Eric!”

“What?”

“Whoever he is, he’s online right now. I’m looking at his keystrokes. Go to these coordinates! Hurry! Save Shea.”

He hung up on Mother with the coordinates in his hard head. “I know where she is.”