A Father's Sacrifice (8 page)

“I’ll do my best.”

“No. You’ll
do
exactly as I tell you! What the hell do you think I have you in there for?”

He tossed his cell phone down onto the bed and paced. The truck was on its way, its fanatical driver prepared to ram it into Dylan Stryker’s front gate going a hundred miles an hour.

That was one point in favor of working with a bunch of zealots who were willing, even eager, to die for their cause. They were so malleable—they actually longed for a leader, someone who could convince them to sacrifice their lives for their beliefs.

And
he
was the man for the job. He shook his head in wry disbelief. There was nothing he could think of that was worth dying for.

Killing, however. That was another matter entirely. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill to obtain Dr. Stryker’s interface.

He’d worked patiently to gain back the headway he’d lost three years ago with the botched kidnapping of Stryker’s wife. He’d lurked in Stryker’s computer for months, reading every e-mail, watching Stryker’s buying habits. His suspicion was true. Stryker’s son had survived. And Stryker was working harder than ever to perfect his technique for the surgical implant of the interface.

So he’d put his plan into motion, recruiting people, studying Stryker, patiently waiting for an opportunity to infiltrate his defenses.

Now the government had unwittingly sent in his nemesis to stop him. It couldn’t have been more perf
ect. Although Natasha presented a challenge, she hadn’t been as good as he was back then, and she wasn’t now.

Still, he was glad he’d had the foresight to put together a backup plan. Backups were essential. Any good hacker knew that. His plan depended on leverage, and he’d soon have access to the best leverage of all—Stryker’s son.

He couldn’t get to the boy inside the estate. Penetrating that fortress would mean taking an unnecessary risk. He had to wait until Stryker decided to move the kid. He was surprised the neurosurgeon hadn’t already done that. Obviously, Stryker needed more motivation.

Tom stretched out on his unmade bed. With the help of his contact on the inside, he’d supply that motivation.

Stryker would soon be exactly where he wanted him. The surgeon had always been weak when it came to family. He’d give up the interface in a heartbeat to save his little boy.

Then he could sell it to the highest bidder. Hell, to all the bidders. It
was
freeware. He chuckled at his joke. Even if it was encrypted, it was no problem. He could break the encryption in no time.

After all, he was still the best.

N
ATASHA COULDN’T SLEEP
. She’d finished installing the new equipment on her computer. Then she’d searched Dylan’s encrypted program files. To her relief, she’d found no trace of the hacker there.

By ten o’clock, she’d been nodding and yawning, so she’d set a simple but effective 128
-bit encryption that would work with the existing security to protect the system until morning, then dragged herself upstairs to bed.

Mintz had let her know that there was a news story on a couple of the local channels—renewing speculation about Dylan’s son. They had video, Mintz told her, showing two figures.

She turned over and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to find a cool place on the pillow, but the sheets scraped her raw arm, reminding her of the gentleness of Dylan’s touch.

She’d felt stripped bare in front of him. Her body had thrummed with awareness as she endured his smoky gaze. There was no denying that he was devilishly handsome and sexy, but that wasn’t all that drew her to him.

It was his fire, his brooding passion. The focused intensity with which he approached everything from his research to his protective care of his son.

He loved Ben. But Mintz was right. Love was not enough. Her parents had loved her. But they’d died.

She didn’t want to be a part of separating Ben from his father. She hated that Mintz was right. But he was, and she had to help him convince Dylan that Ben would not be safe until he let him go.

A deep rumble shook her bed.

Oh, God!
Her eyes flew open.
An explosion?
Her heart leaped into her throat and blinding fear threatened to paralyze her.

The sirens were close. Too close. And no repeat. She remembered Dylan’s list of signals.

Someone had breached the front gate.

Chapter Four

The siren’s screech distorted in Natasha’s ears as she groped under her pillow for her weapon. Her heart pounded frantically in her chest and shock reverberated through her.

The front gate.
A direct attack.

She thrust her feet into her boots and pulled on a sweater. She buckled on her fanny pack and crossed the room, flattening her back against the wall next to the door.

When she eased the door open, the siren’s screech intensified, hurting her ears. She darted a quick look into the hall, but saw no one, so she angled around the door, leading with her gun.

A noise to her right made her whirl, her weapon trained. It was Charlene’s door. The girl’s pale face and wide eyes shone in the dim hall light. She eyed Natasha’s gun with undisguised terror.

Natasha sidled toward her, glancing behind her every few seconds. “What’s happened? Do you know?” she asked.

Charlene clawed at her neck above the dainty blue nightgown. “Something triggered the alarm at the gate.
” She sent a worried look toward the atrium. “But I’ve never heard sirens go on this long.”

“I’m going to check it out. Get back inside,” she commanded, putting her mouth close to Charlene’s ear. “Ben’s going to be scared.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she yelled. “Ben is my charge and Dr. Stryker is my boss. You’re trying to get into his good graces by undermining me. Well it won’t work. He’s—”

“Get Ben’s braces on him,” Natasha snapped.

Charlene blinked.

“If we need to move him, I want him ready.”

Charlene bristled. Natasha held her gaze. Finally Charlene nodded and stepped inside her room and closed the door.

Natasha moved quickly toward the atrium. As she approached the doorway, a different blare filled her ears and the door in front of her swung shut. She lunged for it as the latch clicked into place.

“No!” Her heart jumped into her throat as she wrenched the doorknob. Mintz had told her about the lockdown sequence, designed to protect the living quarters in case of a breach of the estate’s walls.

Panic constricted her throat. She was trapped. She struggled to breathe. She had to get out—now!

Frantically, berating herself for her weakness, she rattled the knob, then stared down at it.

Think!
The fingerprint pad was right beside the knob. Where was her pass code device? She unzipped her fanny pack and dug inside.

A hand touched her bare shoulder. A hot st
rong hand. She tensed. Her right hand tightened around her weapon even as her senses told her whose hand it was.

Dylan.

“I’ve got it.” He pressed his thumb onto the pad and then keyed in the pass code. The lock clicked.

Her breath whooshed out in relief as she pushed the door open.

He squeezed her shoulder. “Ben’s in his room?”

“I told Charlene to put his braces on and wait.”

Dylan sent her an approving glance. “Good. She’s been with him most of his life. He feels safe with her.”

They slipped through the door and Dylan pushed it closed. The atrium was empty, but Natasha saw men in dark clothing moving about outside.

“What’s going on?” she whispered.

He shook his head and rubbed his stubbled cheek. “I can’t reach Alfred. After the excitement this afternoon and the news story tonight, it’s probably another reporter trying to force his way past the guardhouses. I don’t know what the explosion was. Usually one of the night guards would have turned off the sirens by now.”

She wished the guard would hurry up. The noise was grating on her nerves and hurting her ears. Her neck and shoulders ached with tension, and her head was beginning to pound.

Clenching her jaw, she pushed through the two sets of glass doors that formed a small foyer just beyond the atrium. Dylan followed right behind her.

Hector was standing with Robby, another guard she’d met when she’d arrived. They held their weapons at the ready, and stared up the long drive toward the front gate.

Robby turned at their approach. “Dr.
Stryker, someone hit the gate. You can see the smoke above the trees. Mintz told us to stay here and guard the front entry to the house.”

“You don’t know who’s responsible?” Dylan asked.

“No, sir. We haven’t heard anything since Mintz went out there.”

Natasha jogged several steps up the driveway until she spotted the obelisk silhouette of the massive gates. Above them, rising up to obscure the stars, was a growing mushroom of thick black smoke.

She broke into a run.

“Natasha!”

Dylan sprinted up beside her and grabbed her arm. She was forced either to slow down or lose her balance.

“Whoa. What are you doing?” His fingers tightened, burning her flesh.

“My job.” She panted in rhythm with her steps. She tried to twist out of his grasp. “You should get back inside until we know what happened.”

“Me? What about you?”

Irritation flared inside her as she rounded on him. “I’m an FBI agent. You’re unarmed.”

Dylan’s sharp gaze glided over her from head to toe and his mouth turned up. She sent him a disgusted look. She was aware of how she looked, dressed in a black cotton sweater over pink cropped pajama bottoms with lacy hems, wearing hiking boots and a leather fanny pack, and carrying a Glock.

Light flared against the black smoke as something caught fire. Dylan headed toward the gates.

This time Natasha stopped him. “Dylan, wait. Whatever happened out there is aimed at you and your s
on. Ben is probably terrified and wanting his father—especially after his scare this afternoon.” She gestured back toward the house. “Why don’t you go be with him? We can take care of this.”

He glanced back at the house, running a hand across the back of his neck. His expression reflected his struggle. He wanted to be with his son, but he also wanted to see for himself that his estate was still secure.

She remembered what she’d thought the first time she’d seen him. He was burning himself out. A wave of compassion caught her off guard.

Just then the mobile radio clipped to the waistband of his jeans crackled. He unclipped it and listened.

Natasha only caught a couple of words.
Truck. Explosives.

“Alfred, open the side gate.”

“No.” The word cracked like lightning through the radio.

She agreed with Mintz. Dylan was the last person who should be on the other side of that gate right now.

Mintz said something else.

“Then you come in here and tell me what’s going on,” Dylan snapped. “Now!”

He clipped the radio back on his hip and muttered a curse. He paced, flexing his right hand, doubling it into a fist, then flexing it again.

“Dylan.”

A heated frown was his only response.

“Dylan.” She laid a hand on his tense forearm. “You shouldn’t pull Mintz away from the scene right now.”

He ran a hand over his face. “He’s not in charge anymore,” he said bitterly.

“He’s not? You mean my agents have taken over?”

“They aren’t in charge, either. The
scene
has been taken over by the police. Apparently, not only must I have the FBI crawling all over my private property, I can’t even keep the damn cops off.”

Natasha took a deep breath as she eyed the smoke billowing above the twenty-foot gate. The air was tainted with the odors of gasoline, oil and other less-pleasant odors. Smoke stung her nostrils.

“That’s how it’s done,” she commented. “The entrance to your estate is now a crime scene.”

He sent her a glare worthy of a laser scalpel.

She met his glare, shook her head and turned back to the rising smoke. “You really think you can control everything, don’t you?”

“
No.
Alfred says the same thing. You’re both wrong. I just want to know what’s going on.”

“The very definition of control freak,” she muttered.

“What did you say?”

A noise to their left caught her attention. She stepped around Dylan and raised her weapon just as Mintz appeared through a steel mesh door obscured by a tall hedge, accompanied by a dour-faced man in a rumpled suit.

The stern man eyed Natasha’s Glock and swept his suit coat back to reveal his weapon and shield. A police detective.

Natasha lowered her weapon. She dipped into her fanny pack and pulled out her own badge. “Special Agent Rudolph. FBI.”

The detective nodded. “Frank Buckram. Homicide.”

Dylan’s shoulder brushed hers as he stepped forward. “I’m Dylan Stryker. Did you say homicide?”

“Yes, sir,” Detective Buckram said.

“What the hell is going on?” Dylan looked at his trusted friend, whose face was creased with worry and smudged with soot. That Alfred was shaken alarmed him. “Are you all right?”

He nodded and squeezed Dylan’s shoulder with his big rough hand. The gesture both comforted and worried Dylan. It was Alfred’s version of a hug.

“The vehicle was an old delivery truck,” Buckram continued. “Apparently the driver was on a suicide mission. The truck was a rolling bomb.”

The words slammed into Dylan with the impact of .38 slugs. “Bomb? Suicide?” He looked from Alfred to the detective to Natasha.

Her jaw was set, her face fiercely controlled. She exchanged a glance with the detective. Had she been expecting something like this?

Had Alfred? Was that why the ex-POW who’d rather chew rifle slugs than have anyone tell him what to do had been so adamant about accepting the FBI’s help?

“I don’t get it. Are you saying somebody deliberately blew themselves up trying to get through the gates?”

“Yep. Could be one of those terrorist fringe groups. We’ll have to wait and see who claims responsibility.” Buckram pulled out a notepad. “You’re working on some secret government project, right?”