How to Seduce a Fireman: HarperImpulse Contemporary Romance (18 page)

While the words barely escaped the tight confines of Quinn’s resentment-packed throat, hearing them seemed to knock some of the wind out of the old man’s sails. His favorite chair squeaked, just as it had for years. “I’m listening.”

“First off, how’s Mom and Grandpa Hudson?” God, the pain of missing them was so acute he didn’t know if he could get through the conversation without falling apart. The last time he’d seen his mother was at Walter Reed Hospital after his return from Chile. He was being treated for two bullet wounds and an infection. She’d cried and pressed kisses to his face. What he wouldn’t give for one of her hugs right about now. A mother’s hug that silently proclaimed everything would be all right.

“They’re both fine, but that’s not why you called, is it?”

“No.”
Same old heartless bastard
. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. His gaze swept over the whiteboard again. “A few days ago, I put out feelers for openings at the State Department and the DEA.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“Within hours, I got a text threatening the young woman I’m in love with, if I returned to government work.”

“Go on.”

“An ex-SEAL, trained in surveillance equipment, found bugs and hidden cameras in my apartment. Cassie was nearly run over and then followed by a motorcycle. A friend was able to get the first two digits of his license plate. Just now that license plate was found, bent in half and stuck in the crack of my mailbox, at my apartment building.”

“Someone doesn’t want you to come back.”

“Yesterday, I emailed everyone I’d contacted a couple days ago, thanked them for their trouble, and told them that I’d decided to stay on here. I hoped that would end the danger for Cassie, but…”

“But it’s not stopping what’s already been put into motion. Let me call you back on a different phone.” The line went dead.

A little more than a minute went by before Quinn’s phone rang. Caller ID said Caller Unknown. He answered and Buck spoke. “Where is Cassie now?”

“Are you using a burner?” The person who’d sent the threatening text had used one. His dad hadn’t reached his high level of government security without being a ruthless son of a bitch. Damned if he’d tell him where she was.

“I’m using a secure line. Tell me how I can help you?” Old resentments surfaced. Since when had his old man ever offered to help with anything? His trust level for his father was minus zero. What the hell was he thinking to call him? He was beyond desperate to help Cassie, that’s what.

The door to the conference room flew open and Milt charged in, his face nearly beet red with excitement. Strands of grey hair stood on end as if he’d been attacked. The pupils of his hazel eyes were dilated. His hand trembled as he extended his phone to Ryder. “I got him. I got the son of a bitch’s photo.”

Barclay pulled out a chair for Milt to collapse into.

Jace handed him a Coke, but Milt shook too badly to open it. “Someone get the oxygen tank and the first aid kit.” Jace snapped the can open and gave it back to Milt; he helped the old man hold onto it so he could get it to his mouth.

Quinn stepped behind Ryder and peered over his shoulder at the photo on Milt’s cell phone. To his surprise, the picture was in sharp focus and, although it didn’t show the front of the man’s face, it did show his neck. All the air whooshed from Quinn’s lungs. “Holy Mother of God. It can’t be!”

“Son! Son!” His dad’s voice yelling over the phone finally registered.

“It’s T-Bone! Chris Mason. The only one of my team from Chile to survive. He told me he was in Montana. Asked me to come work for his band of mercenaries. Why is he in Florida? What the hell is going on?”

A male nurse, wearing a mask and pushing a wheelchair, entered Cassie’s room. “How’s it going, sweetie? Your doctor ordered an MRI.” His voice was barely heard. He coughed as he glanced at the clipboard. Just her luck. She’d end up with the nurse’s bronchitis, laryngitis or whatever he had. Really, how much did those little white covers work at prevention?

“First, would you give me your full name and date of birth?”

Why did she need an MRI? She hadn’t had one since…when? She couldn’t recall. “My name is Cassie Jacqueline Wolford and I was born on January the fourteenth, ninety-three. Why do I need an MRI? Does Dr. Paxwell think my brain is diseased or something?”

The nurse coughed and looked at the clipboard again. “Hon, they don’t tell us anything, except what to do next. It says here, we’re supposed to have an MRI with dye.”

“Oh? Are you getting one too?” Why in God’s name did nurses talk like that? And should he really be working if he had some kind of a cold or bronchitis? Yet, she knew her sister, an RN, often dragged herself to work when she really wanted to crawl into bed and sleep off whatever ailed her. “Nurses aren’t supposed to get sick,” Megan would say.

“You’re not allergic—” he coughed again. “Sorry. You’re not allergic to anything are you? Iodine? Shellfish? Latex.” He pulled a hypodermic needle from the front pocket of his blue checked scrubs and removed the plastic cover from the needle.

“No. No, I’m not allergic to anything. Although I’m not overly fond of needles.”
Especially when the nurse jabbing me with one is obviously germ-ridden.

“Well, lucky for you, then. You got ol’ Jimmy instead of Donna. Patients complain when she gives them shots.” He rubbed an alcohol-soaked swab of cotton over the vein in Cassie’s neck and injected the solution.

“We inject the dye here, so it’s closer to the head. It’s a double combination shot. Part dye for the imaging and part relaxant for the nerves. Just a little prick. Kinda like my last date.” He laughed, injected the medicine and then stooped to tighten the belts which secured her into the wheelchair.

Cassie wasn’t so sure she liked the male nurse. She hated being spoken to in a condescending way. And who ever heard of getting a shot in the neck? Just wait until she saw Megan; she’d ask her sister, the RN. Also, what was with wearing a turtleneck under his blue scrubs? Had he been getting chills too?

Within seconds, the burning spread through her system and her tongue swelled so she couldn’t speak plainly. Her head became heavy, and she wanted to sleep. Panic hit her hard. Maybe she
was
allergic to whatever was in this injection, but she couldn’t form the words coherently to make Jimmy understand.

He opened the door and pushed her through. “Here we go, darling. Just relax. Those nasty old MRIs don’t hurt a bit. Ever had one?” He threw a wave at a policeman. “See you in a couple hours, officer.”

What was a policeman doing outside her room? Was a criminal being housed somewhere on her floor? Why couldn’t she talk enough to ask? Why did her throat hurt to swallow? She’d felt fine until this nurse gave her that damn shot.

They stopped at the elevator doors and, when they opened, Jimmy shoved the wheelchair on. “Could someone press floor two for me, please?”

By the time they’d reached the second floor, Cassie could barely keep her eyes open. At this rate she’d sleep through the MRI.

****

After Milt had a few hits of oxygen, his coloring improved and his breathing slowed. His lips were no longer blue. Jace, one of the station’s EMT’s, pronounced his pulse an acceptable rate and his blood pressure in a more normal range.

Arlo slid a chair in front of the older man and sat. “Feel up to answering a few questions?” He flashed Milt his badge. “I’m detective Arlo Jacobs, assigned to this case.” He pointed to the whiteboard. “We’ve been writing down everything anyone knows or has seen or heard. Can you tell me what happened earlier?”

Milt tugged on the blanket Jace had wrapped around him. “All…all hell broke loose.” Then he farted.

Arlo slid his chair back a foot or two.

“I’m Quinn’s downstairs neighbor. Probably his best friend.”

“That he is.” Quinn patted his narrow back. The man was so lonely with his wife deceased; he soaked up anyone’s attention. Throw him a kernel of kindness, and he was your friend for life. He was a decent man, always ready to help. Quinn opened and handed Milt a bottle of water. “Drink this, buddy. You’ve been through a rough ordeal. You need rehydrating.”

Milt beamed under Quinn’s meager attentions and gulped the water. “Quinn asked me to keep an eye out for a black Kawasaki Ninja bike. We, in the security business, refer to them as crotch rockets.” He drank more water. “I turned my recliner so I had a better vantage point from which to do my reconnaissance out the front window. Kept a pair of binoculars on the end stand. Was just finishing up my second bag of pork rinds when I heard that bike howling down our street like the devil hisself rolling into town to wreak havoc.”

He shook his head once and gulped more liquid. “Zipped his Ninja in the spot right beside Quinn’s Jeep. I used my binoculars to jot down the license plate number.” His trembling fingers reached into his shirt pocket and handed Arlo a neatly printed number. “I watched him unscrew the license plate, too, and take it off.” He turned to Quinn. “Sorry to tell you this, but he used that very same screwdriver on your tires. You got four flats, buddy. Got two pictures of him doing that damage with my cell too.” He motioned toward the phone Ryder was holding. “Just index backward and you’ll see them.”

Poor Milt’s jaw was swollen and starting to bruise. Quinn squatted in front of him. “Did that bastard hit you?”

The old man nodded. “I opened my door in the hope I could take the picture, nonchalant like so he wouldn’t know what I was up to, but Killer charged out and attacked him. Smart dog, Killer. He knows when a person’s no damn good.” Milt nodded once.

“I got the picture just fine, but when I cussed out the man for kicking my dog, he cold-cocked me.” The old man turned to Noah. “For those of you who ain’t in the security business, that means he hit me before I knew what was about to happen.”

To Noah’s credit, he kept a straight face.

“Jace, could you get our hero here an ice pack.
Damn
that man for hitting you.” Quinn clasped Milt’s shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze. Next to Cassie and the men on the force, this gassy old coot was his favorite person in all of Clearwater. He could have been beaten all to hell and back—or worse. All because he wanted to help a friend.

Wolf’s phone rang and he answered. “What do you mean Cassie’s disappeared?” His booming voice reverberated off the meeting room’s walls.

Everyone stood.

Quinn’s heart stopped beating and simply dropped to his feet like a leaden wrecking ball. No, T-Bone couldn’t have gotten her. His angel was under police protection. His heart ticked back to life and then absorbed a hellacious strong dose of I-will-be-damned anger that pounded in his ears like tympani drums, while his chest constricted to the point he didn’t think he could draw his next breath.
I will kill that bastard if he took her.

“I’m going to rip that poor excuse of a cop a new one.” Arlo punched some numbers on his phone, speaking to the officer stationed outside Cassie’s room. “My man claims a male nurse took her down for an MRI about an hour ago. Nurse said they might be gone a couple hours for the procedure.”

Wolf tossed his cell on the chair and glared at Arlo. “Jenna already checked with the head nurse on the floor to find out why Cassie wasn’t in her room. None of the nurses had a clue. One of them asked your
very observant
man, who passed along the same information. The head nurse called down to imaging to check, since sometimes test requests are slow to reach the nurses’ station. No test had been ordered for Cassie. No one in the MRI unit has seen her.” By now Wolf was all but screaming, his face red and his fists clenching. “In fact, no one in that
whole
damn hospital knows where the hell she is!”

The other beat of Quinn’s heart, the better half of his soul, the sunshine to his darkness, was gone. Neither his mind nor his heart could comprehend it. No, this nightmare could not be happening. A cold chill zipped through his system, leaving his skin clammy. Trembling started in his head and quickly moved to every part of his body until he visibly vibrated. Had Chris—he’d no longer think of him as T-Bone, nicknames were for friends and friends didn’t harm the people he loved—had he hurt her? Was his angel frightened? Was she wondering why Quinn didn’t come and save her? Where in the
hell
could Chris have taken her? His legs gave out and, in wobbly slow-motion, Quinn fell onto his chair.

As though Jace were speaking in a long, hollow tunnel, he proclaimed Quinn in shock as he took his blood pressure. He draped a blanket over him and forced him to drink a bottle of vitamin-fortified water. When Quinn’s phone dinged with an incoming text, he shook so badly he could barely slide it from the pocket of his jeans.

Jace slipped it from Quinn’s unsteady hands and read the text for everyone. “
Can U find her before I kill her?”

Quinn roared with fury and futile frustration. On legs that were shaky a minute or so earlier, he stood and heaved an empty chair across the room. Rage replaced Quinn’s shuddering shock. Why? Why would Chris want to kill Cassie? Why not simply walk up to Quinn and put two bullets through his heart and one through his head? Why destroy the most beautiful soul who ever breathed?

Quinn tossed aside the blanket and began to pace. “I will kill the son of a bitch. Ryder, I know you’re always armed. Give me a damn gun. You got a knife strapped to your leg?”

Wolf got in his face. “Quinn, sit your ass back down. Arlo, you might want to leave. We’ll be forming an extraction team and we
may
use methods you cannot approve of, according to the vows you took to become a police officer.”

Their conversation grew louder as each one made a point in his favor.

“Arlo, I respect that you deal in a world of right and wrong, black and white. But for a day or two, we’ll be dealing in whatever it takes to achieve the desired objective, which in this case is saving my sister. Some things we’ll talk about, maybe even do, you won’t want to know.”

Quinn’s phone rang. This time he was able to snatch it from where Jace placed it on the table. The caller ID once again read Unknown. “Listen you son of a bitch. If you’ve harmed one hair on her head I will scoop your eyeballs out with a jagged-edged spoon. Then I’ll skin you alive with a razor-sharp two-inch knife. Slowly and with great delight. Do you understand?”

“Son? I didn’t think you had it in you. Damn, you had chills going up my back.” The old man’s voice was laced with pride. If only he’d shown that kind of approval for Quinn earlier in his life.

“Dad?”
Yeah, sure, my threatening to torture someone would make you proud of me, wouldn’t it?

“Did Chris abduct Cassie?”

“I just got a text from him.”

“You were right. He’s got property in Montana, but he’s also got a warehouse in Tampa. You want the address?”

Quinn smirked. “Do I want the sun to come up tomorrow? Hold on. Need paper and pen.” Someone placed the items in front of him. “Okay. I’m ready.” He scribbled the address his dad gave him. “Thanks. I…” he cleared his throat. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“There hasn’t been a day in over three years that your mother hasn’t told me how wrong I was in how I treated you. I wouldn’t put up with that kind of bitching from anyone but her. I love her like, well, you find a woman you love to the point of madness, by all that’s holy and unholy, you do what you can to hang onto her.”

“I found my love three years ago, but was too dumb to admit it.”

His dad chuckled—or was he having an asthma attack? The sound was so foreign to Quinn, he wasn’t sure. “Then, by damn, you rescue her.”

“We’re organizing a team now.”

“You’ll do best with Noah Steele as your leader. He’s got the most experience. Dan Wolford’s no slouch, but he’s too emotionally involved, Cassie being his sister.”
How the hell does he know all this? Does he have a dossier on every person in my life?
“Your mother and I are flying down, arriving in four hours. I figure the best place to hook up with you would be the fire station after the extraction. Will they grant us admittance?”

“I’ll see to it.”

“Any equipment you need, you call this number. You go get her, son. I’d kill any bastard who tried to take my wife away from me. And I’d kill without a moment’s hesitation. I expect you to do the same for your woman. I’ll use any kind of power I have to back up whatever you and your friends decide to do. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir. I can’t thank you enough.”

“Grandchildren. Your mother wants grandchildren.” The line went dead.

Well, hell, if that wasn’t the strangest conversation he’d ever had with his old man. He’d actually given him fatherly advice, spoken to him with pride and genuine concern. Expressing a strong degree of possessiveness for his wife wasn’t unusual. His dad had always doted on his mother, demanding to know where she was and who she was with every moment of the day.

On the other hand, his mother had always been attentive and very involved in Quinn’s life. Had that been the problem between him and his father? Was his dad envious of the attention his wife heaped on him as a youngster and teenager? He couldn’t analyze it at the moment. The only things he could think of were finding Cassie and killing one Chris Mason with his bare hands.

Wolf and Arlo were still exchanging words about who would and who wouldn’t be involved in the rescue of Cassie.

Jace shifted his chair to talk quietly with Quinn. “I take it that was your dad?”

“Yeah. Strangest, damn thing. I called him first because I was so frantic to help Cassie, swallowing my pride seemed miniscule, you know?”

Jace nodded. “I’d do the same for Wendy Anne in a heartbeat.”

Quinn still couldn’t grasp it. “Next thing I know he’s giving me advice, hunting down property Chris Mason owns. He and my mother are flying here. Why, I haven’t a damn clue. And he said if we needed any government equipment to let him know. After all these years—all my damn life—of trying to make him proud of me, he sounded like he was.”