Marked (Hostage Rescue Team Series) (15 page)

And it was possible he’d done much, much worse, and sent this little piece of Brandon to taunt her.

Jake brought her even closer, his hold shifting so that he was cradling her. “Okay. Okay, honey, breathe.”

She fought back the nausea, forced the grisly image from her mind and focused on drawing in a painful breath.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Jake barked over his shoulder, she assumed at Agent Travers.

“She wasn’t supposed to see it, it was goddamn shitty timing,” he answered, and from the emphasis on the last word she knew he was chastising the lab tech. Sure enough, the scrambling of feet followed his words and the door at the back clicked shut.

Jake wasn’t done. “Why the hell would you let her in here? You knew I was en route—”

“Jake.” She curled her fingers into his T-shirt, holding on with the last of her control. “Get me out of here.” Her voice wobbled and she was desperate to get some privacy before she broke down completely in front of everyone.

She’d fought to make Travers bring her down here with the very line that haunted her now.
Don’t you dare treat me like I’m some weak female because you’re afraid I’m going to fall apart. If you know something about my brother, you damn well better tell me right now!

Now she was on the verge of doing just that and she couldn’t stop it.

“Okay, babe. Come on.” Keeping her tucked tight against him, he maneuvered her out of the lab and into the hall. “Give us a few minutes,” Jake said to someone.

“Take her in here,” she heard Morales answer.

Rachel didn’t lift her head, didn’t want to face anyone or have anyone see her like this except for Jake. He walked her sideways down the hall and another door opened.

“Tuck and I’ll make sure you guys have some privacy,” Morales continued.

“Thanks,” Jake said, and closed the door behind them.

Finally alone without any prying eyes to witness her breakdown, Rachel stopped fighting the inevitable. A low, painful moan tore out of her gut. The tremors in her muscles turned to full-on quivering, so strong they hurt. She choked back a sob, the pressure in her chest unbearable.

“He’s t-torturing him,” she managed, fisting Jake’s shirt now.

“Ah, hell, baby…” He pressed his face against her hair and just held her while the torrent tore through her.

She appreciated that he didn’t try to quiet her or give her false words of reassurance. Jake was her anchor in this storm of fear and devastation and she was so grateful to have him there. The pressure of his arms never let up while the shock ran its course. Tears were beyond her at the moment, trapped too deep beneath the weight of the horror pressing down on her.

Rachel leaned into him, letting him support her as she struggled to get her breathing and heart rate back under control. With one deep, shaky breath she finally released his shirt and lifted her head, quickly turning away to wipe at her damp face. Jake eased his hold but kept a hand against the middle of her back.

“Want to sit down?” he asked her.

“No.” Her voice sounded raw and scratchy, as though she’d been crying for a long time when in reality she’d been doing everything possible not to. She needed Jake to see that she was strong, that she could handle this, because she needed to see this through. One way or another, she was getting her brother back.

She cleared her throat, smoothed her hands over her own shirt to avoid looking at him. “I want to know how they got…that,” she said, unable to say finger without wanting to throw up, “and whether or not he’s still alive.”

“Let me find out all that. You sit here and I’ll—”

“No.” She said it with such force that Jake’s head jerked back a little. “I want to hear it straight, without any of you filtering it.”

He studied her for a long moment, then sighed and nodded. “All right. But as soon as we’re done I’m taking you back to the hotel. You’re not staying here a second longer than necessary. Got it?”

As long as she found out whether Brandon was still alive or not, she’d leave. “Fine.”

“Come on, then.” He slid an arm around her waist and opened the door. The feel of that solid arm supporting her gave her strength. Her legs were a bit unsteady but she kept pace with him, studiously avoiding looking at the lab door as they passed it. Tuck and Celida were waiting a discreet distance away. “We’re going to see Travers,” he told them.

“We’ll come with you,” Tuck said, and hit the elevator call button. They rode in silence up to the floor where Travers’s office was located, finding him at his desk talking on the phone.

He ended the call when he saw them and spoke to Rachel. “You doing okay?”

She nodded, thinking that was the stupidest damn question he could have asked her. Jake stayed right next to her, his hold at once protective and possessive. There was no doubt in her mind that she loved this man. “How did you get it?” She didn’t need to clarify what she meant.

“It was delivered in a sealed packing envelope a couple hours ago.”

“By mail?” Jake pressed.

Travers shook his head. “Hand-delivered.”

“By whom?” Celida demanded. “You get them on video?”

“Third party. This time Xang used an old woman to make the delivery.” He turned the monitor of his computer around and used the mouse to start a clip of the video feed. An old woman of Asian heritage carried a padded envelope up to the door, stood there for a second in uncertainty, and seeing that the office was officially closed, left it leaning against the door before walking away.

Travers stopped the video. “There was a note with it. It’s down in the lab undergoing further analysis, but it’s hand-written in Mandarin. One of our agents translated it as saying ‘This is your doing, daughter of Li-Jiao’.”

Cold flashed through her. “That’s my mother’s Chinese name. Brandon must have told him.” It proved that her brother had been alive at the time the note was written, at least.

“Fingerprints on the envelope aren’t Xang’s, but the ones on the…evidence are,” he finished, glancing at Rachel with an almost apologetic look in his eyes.

She swallowed, suppressing another shudder of revulsion. “Is my brother still alive?” Jake’s hold remained rock steady. Her heart was pounding again, every hope and prayer focused on that.

“We don’t know, but it doesn’t make sense to send us a piece of him if he wasn’t, and forensics told us it was taken from him while he was alive. We’re doing everything we can to track where the package originated from and we’re still tracing his earlier texts to you.”

But they had no solid leads for a location on Xang and had no idea where Brandon might be. “So it’s likely he’s still alive.” She needed to hear it from him out loud.

Travers inclined his head. “Yes.”

Rachel inhaled, let it out slowly, aware of a heavy wave of fatigue washing over her. “So what happens now?”

“You want me to be straight with you, right?”

“Yes.” Hard as it was to hear the truth, she needed to.

“We need a break or a good piece of intel to help us find Xang. Once we find him, we find your brother.”

He didn’t need to tell her it could take days, weeks, or even longer for that to happen. And that the longer it took, the less chance her brother had of surviving this nightmare. “What can I do in the meantime?”

Travers leaned back in his chair, his eyes gleaming with something close to respect as he watched her. “You can go try to get some sleep. We’ll notify you if anything more comes in. Morales will check in with you, keep you updated while we work the investigation.”

“I’ll see if I can get some time off, but if not I’ll be with you when I can,” Jake said in a low voice, his arm tightening around her.

“I’ll help out with anything you need too,” Tuck said from behind her.

She glanced over her shoulder, gave him a little smile. “Thanks.”

Jake’s fingers flexed on her waist, reassuring, protective. “Anything else you want to know?”

“Can’t think of anything right now.” Now that her most urgent questions had been addressed, as much as possible anyhow, she was exhausted.

“Let’s go.” Jake turned her away from Travers and walked her out of the office. He spoke to Celida and Tuck on the way to the elevator. “I’m taking her back to the hotel now. I’m due in at HQ at oh-five-hundred with Bauer, and Tuck, I know you’re in tomorrow as well. You’ll check in with her in the morning?” he said to Celida.

“You don’t even have to ask,” she told him. “Either of you need anything tonight, let me know.”

“Will do.”

After saying goodnight he hustled her out to his truck and drove her back toward her hotel. “Cold?” he asked, eyeing the way she was huddled in the passenger seat. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he kept checking all the mirrors as though he was watching for someone who might be following them. Made sense, and she was glad for his vigilance, but it didn’t make her feel any safer to be reminded that she was still under threat as well.

“A bit.” It was the memory of that severed finger that kept slamming into her brain. She couldn’t stop imagining what that had been like—for Brandon to scream and plead while Xang sawed off his finger. Had he even tended Brandon’s wound afterward? Her brother could have bled out from such an injury…

“Here.” Jake placed his leather jacket over her. She dragged it up over her shoulders, the scents of leather and Jake helping to calm her racing thoughts. He angled the heat vents in the dash at her and turned the fan on high. Soon her body was warm enough but her feet and hands were still cold and clammy.

“When’s the last time you ate?”

She thought about it. “Can’t remember but the thought of food right now makes me want to throw up.”

“We’ll order you something later if you feel like it.”

“Okay.” They rode in silence for another ten minutes before he spoke again.

“I’m so damn sorry you had to see that, babe.”

“Me too.” Although she was far sorrier about what her brother must have endured. She fidgeted with the edge of the leather coat. “Do
you
think Brandon’s alive?”

“Yeah.”

She turned her head to look at him. “Do you think Xang will send in more pieces of him?”

He shifted in his seat, for the first time looking like he wanted to avoid the subject. “I don’t know,” he said finally, his tone full of regret. “But I do think he’s doing this to get back at you. Either for rejecting him or because of what happened during the drop.”

She appreciated his honesty. “I’m not giving up on him,” she announced as Jake took the turnoff to her hotel. “Maybe it sounds stupid in light of everything that’s happened, but until I see Brandon’s body for myself, I won’t believe that he’s gone.”

“I understand. I’d feel the same way,” he said quietly. “And he needs you to keep believing he’ll be okay.”

Nodding, she looked back through the windshield, silently acknowledging that her hope was fading with each passing hour. But if Brandon could endure what he had—might still be enduring, she thought with another shudder—then she owed it to him to hold on too.

****

Pumped from the recon mission he’d just completed, Xang slipped down the darkened alley and let himself into the side door of the warehouse. The heavy metal door groaned open, exposing nothing but blackness inside.

Pulling his weapon out of his waistband, he stepped inside and eased the door shut behind him.

Silence greeted him and for a moment he wondered if his prisoner had bled to death while he’d been gone, despite the rudimentary bandaging. But when he walked deeper into the cavernous room he at last made out the sound of shallow, raspy breathing.

Xang smiled. “Ah, so you’re still with me,” he said to Brandon, a barely discernible lump on the mattress in the corner.

He strode over and used the small pen light on his keychain to illuminate the area. Brandon lay on his side, his mangled right hand cradled in his left where he was still applying pressure to try and slow the bleeding from the amputation. The gauze bandage Xang had found in a first aid kit and hastily wrapped around the stump of the finger, was saturated with blood. Brandon’s face was shiny with sweat, his skin grayish in the beam of light.

“I just saw your sister,” Xang taunted, enjoying the anguish in the younger man’s eyes. “She saw what I did to you.” He’d broken into a building on the opposite corner from the FBI office and set up on the third floor, using a set of binoculars with non-reflective lenses to watch who came and went. He’d been in position when the old woman had dropped the envelope off, had watched when someone had brought it inside.

And he’d been there not only to watch that same dark-haired man in the pickup from earlier arrive, but also to see him walking out of the building with Rachel. He’d made sure to stay far enough back to avoid detection, then had the cab he’d called for follow the pickup to the hotel.

The irony of it made him chuckle. “I know where she’s staying.” Now it was just a matter of finding out what room she was in. He assumed she was smart enough not to be listed there under her own name. Once he found out the room number though, it would be simple enough. Provided the men he sent after her could take care of her FBI guard dogs.

Xang knew just who to send from his network.

He had the whole thing planned out already, and he would act on his own, without the cell leaders knowing. They weren’t here, weren’t on the ground and wouldn’t be directly involved with planting the bombs. The beautiful thing was, he didn’t even have to be involved with the rest of it. All he had to do was get in touch with some of the maintenance people he knew the cell already had in place. If they could successfully pose as maintenance workers, then it shouldn’t be too hard for them to pose as housekeeping for a few hours.

They could get Rachel before executing the main attack, he could kill her himself and then he’d have proven his worth to the men financing everything from back in China. They’d have irrefutable evidence that he was much more than just a talented hacker.

Smiling to himself, he leaned forward to peer into Brandon’s wide, terrified eyes. They were glazed with pain…and dread. “I’ve got plans for your sister,” he said softly. “But first, maybe I should send her another souvenir.” He reached down for his knife, drawing it slowly from the sheath, savoring the blank terror in the other man’s eyes as he held up the blade so it gleamed in the light.