Marked (Hostage Rescue Team Series) (9 page)

“Nice to meet you,” she responded, gripping his big, callused hand. He looked older than Jake by a few years, and was several inches shorter but was just as broad through the chest and shoulders. His dirty-blond hair was cut into short waves that fell across his forehead and around his face, giving him a California surfer look. He had lively brown eyes that crinkled slightly at the corners as he smiled at her.

“And this is Clay Bauer,” Jake added, nodding toward the giant of a man with the military short chocolate-brown hair.

He made no move to come around the island, so she stayed where she was, feeling like she was being scrutinized by those vivid blue eyes. He was the tallest of the three, and the most heavily muscled. One look at him and it was obvious he was a seasoned operator. Something about his set expression told her he wasn’t too happy about her being there, as if he was suspicious of her and whatever trouble she’d brought to Jake’s door, so she merely nodded in greeting and received the same in turn.

If Jake picked up on the chilly reception from his friend, he didn’t let on. “You hungry? Thirsty?” he asked her.

The thought of eating at the moment made her feel nauseous. “Just some water would be great, thanks.” Jake went to get it for her and she stood there awkwardly, not knowing what to say to fill the void as his friends watched her.

“So where do you know Jake from?” Tuck asked, back to munching on his burger.

“We took a few classes together in college and were in the same physics study group in our final semester.” She left out the part about her tutoring him in case they teased him about it later.

Tuck stopped chewing and swung his head around to give Jake an astonished look. “Really? I never knew you could do physics, aside from windage calculations and stuff. Huh. Maybe we should start calling you Einstein instead of farmboy.”

“Bite me, Tuck,” Jake said from the refrigerator, where he was filling a glass with ice for her.

Grinning, Tuck faced her again. “He’s so touchy sometimes. Like living with a moody teenager.”

“I’ve never known Jake to be moody,” she said, defending him automatically. She didn’t know either man at the island at all, but it was way easier to imagine Jake living with Tuck than Clay. She smiled her thanks to Jake when he returned with her water, ordering the nerves in her stomach to stop churning. She felt totally out of place here with his friends and she was worried as hell about Brandon.

“Why don’t you go grab a seat out on the back deck while I fill these guys in on the details?” Jake said. It wasn’t really a suggestion, only phrased as one, so she nodded and let herself out the sliding glass doors onto the wood deck.

Choosing a padded deck chair, she leaned back against the backrest and sighed as she surveyed the backyard. A tall privacy fence enclosed the tidy space, the lawn green and mowed short with military precision. There were no shrubs or flowers of any kind, just a stone patio below that housed an industrial-sized grill and a stone fire pit. Men loved their fire and grilling meat, and these guys were more alpha than most so it didn’t surprise her. A few birds chirped from the branches of a large oak tree in one corner, the fresh green leaves rustling slightly in the breeze.

It should have soothed her but she was way beyond being soothed at the moment.

She mentally cringed as she thought of Jake inside, telling his teammates about Xang and Brandon. She wasn’t sure if Jake had ever mentioned her to them in the past, but if he hadn’t, this wasn’t the kind of first impression she wanted to make. No matter what happened, she would absolutely not play the victim. She was stronger than that and would do whatever was necessary to help get her brother back and nail Xang.

She drummed her fingers on the arms of the wooden chair as she waited. The team at her place must have gone through everything by now, and the agents tracing Brandon’s phone must know
something
. She hated being kept in the dark about everything, wished they’d at least give Jake updates so he could pass them on to her.

Her mother was going to freak when she learned about all this, and her bosses wouldn’t be thrilled about the stolen plans or losing her until the investigators cleared her to go back to work. All that was out of her control though, and didn’t matter next to Brandon’s safety anyhow.

The sliding glass door opened a few minutes later and Jake stood there, giving her an encouraging grin. “Wanna come back in now?”

Preferring to talk about things inside and away from any potential eavesdroppers who might be in the neighboring yards, she carried her untouched water glass inside. Tuck and Clay were both still by the island but they’d finished eating, and judging from the hard expressions they wore and the way they had their arms folded across their chests, they hadn’t liked what Jake had told them. Which meant they likely thought something bad had happened to her brother as well.

Rachel swallowed and followed Jake to the table where he pulled out a chair for her. With a murmur of thanks she sat and waited for one of them to speak.

“Where’s she gonna stay? Here?” Tuck asked.

What?
Rachel swung her eyes to Jake, ready to protest, but he beat her to it. “No, in a hotel closer to D.C. for now. She’ll need to be near the Baltimore office during the investigation, and this way she’ll be close to work if one of us needs to take her there for some reason.”

She relaxed a little, glad that at least she wouldn’t be intruding on them to that extent. “I’d prefer you run things past me and ask for my input before making decisions on my behalf,” she said to Jake, wanting to make it clear that she wouldn’t tolerate him dictating everything without at least talking to her.

He seemed to fight a smile at the edge in her tone, but nodded once. “Clay and I are training all day tomorrow, but if you need anything, Tuck can take care of it until I’m free,” Jake told her.

She looked over at the others. “Thank you. I’m really sorry about any inconvenience this causes you guys, but I appreciate your help.”

“Hey, no big deal,” Tuck said, then looked at Clay and raised a pointed eyebrow at him. “Right?”

“Yeah,” the big man grunted in a deep voice, though to her he sounded less than enthusiastic. She didn’t blame him for feeling that way. He dealt with other people’s crappy situations every day on the job, and here she’d just brought another one to their doorstep on their day off.

Jake spoke again. “The hotel will be secure enough, so you won’t need one of us with you twenty-four seven, but if you need to leave it for any reason you should have one of us there just in case.”

“Got it.” Though she wished it could be just Jake who looked after her, she understood why he couldn’t and was grateful that the others were willing to help look out for her. And hopefully this whole nightmare wouldn’t last longer than a day or two more, because one: her head would explode, and two: a hotel for any longer than that would be crazy expensive and she didn’t want to have to put a serious dent in her savings because of some asshole terrorizing her and her brother.

No, she told herself with a mental shake. Brandon would contact her, the FBI would catch Xang and she could go back to her life again. But there was something else she wanted to know.

“What about—” She stopped as her phone chimed with an incoming message.

Snatching it from the table, she read the text with her heart pounding, only to have it freeze in her chest as the words registered. She felt the blood rush out of her face, leaving her suddenly cold and woozy.

“What?” Jake demanded in a worried voice, leaning over to see the phone for himself.

Rachel automatically read the message once again, fear turning her insides to jelly as she realized that all this shit had just gotten far too real. “He’s got Brandon,” she rasped out, and shoved the phone at Jake.

Letting himself into the hotel room a few hours later, Jake quietly closed the door behind him and met Rachel’s gaze. His heart clenched at the sight of her red, swollen eyes.

She’d held it together from the time she’d received the chilling text and through the drive here to D.C., somehow managing to wait until he left to go talk to hotel security about the situation before finally venting her fear and grief in private. Normally the thought of comforting a crying woman made him uncomfortable as hell, but damn he wished he’d been here to hold Rachel.

That text had to be permanently burned into her brain, was probably all she could think about.

I have your brother. Bring me the blueprints tonight for every project you’ve worked on in the last three years. Come alone or he dies.

That was the gist of it. He’d also given explicit instructions on how and where the drop was to be made, and reiterated that Rachel was to come alone. If she brought cops or Feds with her, he’d kill Brandon. Jake knew that fear had been eating her alive ever since.

The analysts hadn’t been able to verify that Xang had sent the message because he’d likely used a burner phone, so they couldn’t trace or track it, and the clever bastard had even layered encryption shit on it. But it had to be him.

Xang might have slowed them down, but he hadn’t won the war yet and he wouldn’t get away with this. With the double whammy of being on the Most Wanted list and now the possible kidnapping on top of what he’d done in Rachel’s place, Xang had just brought a large part of the FBI’s manpower onto his case. He wouldn’t be able to evade them much longer.

“Security’s all up to speed on everything,” Jake told Rachel, staying next to the door even though everything in him was dying for the chance to wrap his arms around her. “If they see anything suspicious they’ll contact one of our guys. You’re safe here.”

She wiped her eyes, let out a hitching breath. “Thanks.”

Ah, babe.
He hated seeing her this way. “I’ve asked one of the agents at your place to pack you some stuff and bring it over. A female.”

Rachel nodded. “I’d appreciate it.”

To stem the urge to go to her, Jake shoved his hands into his jeans’ pockets and leaned against the wall. “How you holding up?” He could see for himself, but he hoped she’d talk about it, let some of it out before she exploded.

She looked up at him with tormented eyes, as if to tell him what an asinine question it had been. “I’m freaking out and blaming myself for everything. If I’d handled things differently yesterday, maybe he would have listened, or at least he would have stayed the night at my place rather than with Tim—Xang—and the others. Then none of this would have happened.”

Jake shook his head. “It’s not your fault,” he said firmly. “And Xang’s not gonna do anything to him because he needs your brother as collateral until he gets what he wants from you.”
I hope.
She flinched at his words and he silently cursed his bluntness. He pushed out a hard breath, unable to stand there and just watch her suffer. “What do you need right now?”

Her spine straightened, a hint of the fire inside her burning in her eyes. It heartened Jake to see it. She was gonna need every last bit of inner strength to see this through. “I need to know he’s okay and to know exactly how the drop is going to go tonight.”

They had no way of verifying whether her brother was all right, but he could at least ease her mind about the other. “The analysts are going to give you a copy of the plans to take to the drop, but slightly altered.”

Her puffy eyes filled with alarm. “Altered how?”

He shrugged. “Just missing some precise details about entry and exit points, reinforcing structures, stuff like that. We can’t give him the full schematics, for security reasons.”

She came off the bed in a rush, fear radiating off her in a wave he could practically feel. “He’ll hurt Brandon.”

Jake held out a hand to stop her, make her listen. “We’re going to take him down once you do the drop, so it won’t matter because he won’t get the chance to touch Brandon again. But even if he somehow transmits the plans to someone else before we move in, they’ll look legit. We won’t do anything to jeopardize Brandon or the lives of all those civilians potentially in the crossfire.” Assuming Xang was planning some sort of terror attack on one of the buildings.

Rachel sucked in a deep, shaky breath and closed her eyes as though fighting for control, and Jake couldn’t take it anymore. He covered the distance between them in two strides and pulled her into a tight hug.

A shiver ripped through her and she sighed, wrapping her arms around his back as she pressed her cheek to his chest. Jake closed his eyes too. It felt so good to have her in his arms, accepting the comfort he offered. He nuzzled the top of her head, breathed in the sweet scent of vanilla and warm woman.

Running a hand over the length of her slender back, he tried to reassure her about what was coming. “I’m gonna be as close to you as I can get tonight without being detected, and Tuck and Clay will be there too, along with an undercover team. You’ll have an earpiece no one will be able to see, so we can hear you and you can hear us if we need to abort at the last second. We’re gonna have you covered every step of the way, sweetheart.”

He’d never allow her to make the drop otherwise. Would never have allowed her to participate period if her brother’s life hadn’t been in jeopardy. “And once you’ve made the drop and get out of range, we’ll take him down.”

She nodded, her cheek rubbing against his chest, seeming content to stay nestled in his embrace. And he sure as hell wasn’t in any hurry to let her go. “But it won’t be Xang who shows up.”

Probably not, unless he was stupid or fucking desperate. The first wasn’t likely. The second was a good bet, and it made him incredibly unpredictable and dangerous. “Then whoever it is will lead us to him. We’ll get him and find your brother. It’ll all be over soon.”

“What if someone else comes for the designs and transmits them to Xang?” she said against his shirt. “How are we going to get proof of life?”

And that was the giant sinkhole in this plan the guys at the field office had come up with. He’d figured Rachel would see it from a mile away, and he’d been right. “He’s a hacker, not a murderer.” At least as far as they knew.