Breaking the Rules (63 page)

She took the gun with her as she went back into the living room, stopping first to lock the door, and even push the refrigerator in front of it again. She could already hear police sirens—one of Eden’s neighbors had no doubt reported the ungodly noise.

Neesha took a can of soda from the fridge, and went back to the couch. No need to crouch behind it anymore. She set the gun on the cushion beside her and took one of the full clips that Dan had left on the end table, and replaced the one she’d just emptied.

And then she took out the cell phone that Dan had given her, and called him, reporting what had happened in a clear, even voice.

Dan kept saying, “Are you all right? Are you sure you’re all right?”

And she kept saying yes.

He told her that some friends of his were on their way—friends who worked for the FBI, friends that she could trust, friends who would take her someplace safe. But she asked him if it was okay if she stayed right there and just waited for him and Izzy and Eden and Jenni and Ben to get home.

And he said yes.

It was only after she hung up, only after she opened her soda and took a sip, that she started to shake and she started to cry. And she remembered the fear that had bloomed in Todd’s eyes—fear and a dark despair as he realized that he was doomed—the same fear and despair that she’d felt every day for eight years, three months, and thirteen days.

And she couldn’t imagine ever getting pleasure from making another human being feel that way.

Although with Todd? When she’d given him her absolute and final
no
in the form of those bullets barreling out of that gun?

She’d come pretty close.

Ben barely made it down onto the floor before the guard unlocked the door and pushed it open.

Jenn and Eden quickly snapped to it, dropping to their knees beside
him as if they’d just finished dressing him, and were tying his sneakers, looking up at the door as if surprised that it was opening.

“Oh, thank God,” Eden said, and Ben heard the crinkling sound of a plastic grocery bag before the door thunked shut again, and the bolt slid home.

Jenni poked him. “Door’s shut. We’re good.”

“We’re more than good,” Eden said, taking out both of his glucagon kits, and tossing one to Ben. “We’re ready to get out of here. Or at the very least improve the odds for Izzy and Danny. I counted seven of them—including the ones called Jake and Nathan.”

“I got six,” Jenn said. “Five inside plus the one out front.”

“No,” Eden said, “I saw two outside, plus those same five …”

“Wow,” Ben said, mixing the powder with the liquid in the vial as Eden did the same with the second kit. “I have no idea how many bad guys there are.”

“Your eyes were closed.” Jenn gave him a good excuse.

“So it’s Danny and Izzy against seven men with guns,” Ben repeated.

“At least,” Eden confirmed. “But maybe we can lower that by one.” She moved back behind the door, where she’d be hidden from the guard’s view when it opened. “If I’m standing
here
, and you’re
there
, with Ben on the floor …”

“He’s not going to come in if he can’t see you,” Jenn pointed out. “Maybe you should just stand more in the middle of the room, like, Ben’s choking and you’re distressed.”

“I can do distressed,” Eden said.

“If I’m the one who’s choking,” Ben said to Jenn as he got into position, “
you
should have the second syringe.” He handed it to her.

“And we hit him with both,” Eden said, “right at the same time.”

“While I go for his gun,” Ben said.

Jenn and Eden looked at each other over the top of Ben’s head.

“Come on,” Ben said. “If we’re doing this, we have to do it. All of us, together.”

“If you get yourself shot,” Eden told him, “I will kick your ass.”

She hugged him hard, hugged Jenn, too, and Ben knew what his sister was thinking. It was do-or-die time.

And they were probably going to die.

“We have maybe five minutes,” Izzy said as Dan ended his call with Neesha, “before you need to call Jake.”

“We’re not ready for me to call Jake.” Dan was shocked—Izzy could see it in his eyes, on his face. Neither one of them had expected Todd to come back into the apartment, although now that he had, it made perfect sense.

Whoever was down there in that big white warehouse that seemed to glow in the predawn darkness had gotten tired of waiting for Dan to call, and had sent Todd in to wake him up.

But instead of moving forward, Danny was still struggling to compartmentalize the idea that the sweet little girl they’d left behind had needed to defend herself with deadly force. Instead of giving himself a pat on the back for successfully teaching her to fire the weapon that had killed her attacker, he was mired in the horror of it all.

They’d reached the point in their approach where they had to move in more slowly, more cautiously, and if Izzy had more than five minutes to spare, he would have sat there for at least thirty, just watching the place and observing the patterns and check-in procedures of the various guards. He also would have traversed the building’s perimeter before making that phone call to Jake. He glanced at his watch. Or maybe not. Once that sun came up, they’d lose their advantage. So maybe this was fate plus common sense giving them a friendly nudge.

While Dan had been on the phone with Neesha, Izzy’d spoken briefly to Jules Cassidy, who was probably going to get his ass fired for helping them this way. But that was another thing that Izzy couldn’t worry about right now.

“The witness your AIC is looking for just killed a man in self-defense,” Izzy had reported, giving Jules the address of Eden’s apartment. “You might want to get someone over there, pronto, because the
police are on their way, and it could get ugly if they try to kick down the door. She’s inside with the body, and she’s armed and understandably tightly wound. She’s also got a cell phone.” He rattled off Greg’s number so the FBI could at least contact her.

“Bless you,” Jules said. “I’ll make sure she stays safe.”

“Roger that, sir,” Izzy said. “I’m betting you grok how the fact that their man being dead makes him unable to communicate with the mothership via cell phone, which shortens the time line for our”—he cleared his throat—“surveillance. I need a little help, ASAP, from our friendly eye in the sky.”

“I’m on it,” Jules had said, and cut the call.

Izzy now got a text from the FBI agent:
4 out, 11 in, believe 3 of those 11 are Hs in sm rm NE
. It was followed, immediately by a text from Troubleshooter Tess Bailey, verifying those numbers.

Yes
. “Fifteen life-forms—twelve tangos, three H’s,” Izzy told Dan. “Cassidy just told me they believe the three hostages are being held in a small room in the northeast part of the building.”

That information brought Danny back. Or maybe he’d just got his second wind. Because he nodded and took out Eden’s cell phone as he said, “I have to call Jake. We have to give him a reason for why Todd’s not answering his phone or calling to check in.”

“Wow, what a good idea,” Izzy said. “But hold up there, Skippy, I already got it all figured out. Here’s what you’re going to say.”

S
ome kind of serious situation is going down,” Dan said as he spoke via Eden’s cell phone with Jake, who was inside of the very building he and Izzy were watching. Jake, who was holding Jenni and Eden and Ben at gunpoint. Jake, who started this conversation with a threat to kill one of them if Dan didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. Dan had interrupted
that
shit midsentence. Control the conversation, Izzy had advised him. He was trying. “Right here, in an apartment directly across the courtyard. The police are all over the place—squad cars are everywhere. They’ve got a guy cuffed and three uniformed officers are taking him out of here. Don’t tell me—you left a man behind to follow me. One of the neighbors must’ve spotted him, knew he didn’t belong here, saw his weapon, and called it in.”

On the other end of the phone, Jake swore, but Dan didn’t let him take control of the conversation.

“I know you want the girl,” Dan said as Izzy, who was listening in, nodded his approval, “but the cops have already knocked on my door, no doubt looking for information, and I didn’t open up because I had blood in my hair and I thought it might raise eyebrows. If I come walking out there now …”

“Well, you figure out a way to get it done,” Jake told him.

“No,” Dan said. “You fucked this up by leaving this idiot here—
you’re
going to have to wait. And while you’re waiting? I want proof of life and I want it right fucking now. I want to talk to all three of them, and then I’m going to want to talk to them again, after—”

“Which one do you want me to kill?” Jake asked, throwing Dan’s own words back in his face. “Right fucking now?”

And Dan couldn’t help himself. He hesitated. Just a second or two, but it was enough. Izzy made
keep going
motions, but it was too late. He’d dropped the ball.

“You’ll go to the girl,” Jake said, “and you’ll get the girl. And then you’ll call me. Because
I
want proof that
you
have
her
. You have ten minutes, or one of the hostages is dead.”

“Ten minutes isn’t—” Dan said, but the call had been cut. “Jesus!”

“That’s okay,” Izzy told him, tried to reassure him. “You did okay. Well, maybe not okay, but we both knew it was a long shot and … We can do this in ten minutes.”

“Maybe we can set up a conference call,” Dan said. “You know, with Neesha?”

“I’m betting Jake wouldn’t recognize her voice,” Izzy said as he started toward the building.

Dan followed. “But that’s great. That means we can call back in, like seven minutes, and I say that I have her, and
you
pretend to be a frightened little girl.”

Izzy looked back at him with an odd mix of sympathy and disgust in his eyes. “And if he wants a picture? You gonna put me in a dress with a little pink bow in my hair?”

Dan was grabbing wildly at solutions and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself. “We pretend we lose connection and then we get Neesha to send me a picture, which I send to him.”

“What if he wants a picture of her dead body?” Izzy said.

“We fake it.”

“She’s alone in that apartment,” Izzy pointed out. “Even if you could get her to take out the ketchup and squeeze it onto herself, how’s she going take the picture of herself lying there, dead?”

“So … we talk her into letting the FBI in there,” Dan said, but even as the words left his lips, he knew
that
would never happen. Not in the next ten minutes.

“We’re doing this the simple way, bro,” Izzy told him, not unkindly. “We’re going in there and we’re getting them out.”

Armed only with kitchen knives, except okay, there were four men outside that building who were in possession of a variety of weaponry. It wouldn’t take much to make a transfer of all that firepower into the two SEALs’ hands.

The plan was a relatively simple one that they’d already established. Izzy would take out the security cameras and the guards in the front. Dan would dispatch the other two, and they’d meet up on the roof and play it by ear from there.

Except …

“I’m giving you an order to use deadly force,” Dan said to Izzy as they moved closer to the structure.

Izzy looked at him like he’d gone mad. “Who died and made you admiral?” he asked.

“If one of us is going to burn for this,” Dan said, “I want it to be me.”

Izzy made a raspberry sound. “You’re the career Navy man,” he pointed out. “Dude, look at you—you have master chief written all over you. If you really think there needs to be an order,
I’ll
give the order. These assholes just threatened to kill someone we love. They are dead fucking serious, and we are, too. If you have a problem eliminating those guards in a permanent fashion, you tell me now—”

“No,” Dan said. “I just didn’t want …” He stopped. Started over. “You’re an asset to the Teams, and I’m planning on getting out anyway.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“Dude, you’re suffering from marriage madness. You don’t know what the hell you’re saying, because you’re too busy trying to find words that rhyme with love so you can write Jennilyn a freaking sonnet.
Above
, okay? It’s moon above, stars above, either work equally well. Problem solved, move on.”

Dan shook his head. “That’s not—”

“Zip it, Chatty Cathy, it’s go time,” Izzy said, shooting Dan the hand signal for
ready
along with
shut the fuck up
.

They were just going to make it before the sun burst, in its full glory, over the mountains to the east.

Except there was something … a light in the sky, coming from the west, shimmering slightly as it moved toward them …

Izzy saw it, too.

A light—and a noise. Getting bigger and louder and …

“What the fuck?” Izzy said exactly what Dan was thinking. He turned to look at him, shouting over the deafening roar. “Okay, bro, change of plans …”

Eden took a deep breath, about to pound on the door and scream,
Help! We need help in here
, when a sound started, distant at first, then louder and louder, a high-pitched whine accompanied by a low rumbling.

Ben and Jenni were both looking at her, confusion on their faces. And she knew that she was looking back at them the same way.

It was Jenn who identified it first. “It’s a plane,” she said, and even though Eden couldn’t hear her over the rattle and roar, she could read her lips. “A jet—it’s landing on the airstrip outside.”

And Eden’s first thought was that it was Izzy, even though she knew it couldn’t possibly be. She had to close her eyes for a moment, because she was filled with such a rush of hope and longing at the idea that, in just a few short moments, she’d be safe in his arms.

But then she realized that if it
wasn’t
Izzy on that plane—and it wasn’t, it couldn’t be—then it was someone, or a lot of someones, who worked for or with Jake. Two against seven was dangerous enough odds. This plane was definitely adding to that number by at least one,
and quite possibly doubling or even tripling it. Shoot, big enough planes could carry hundreds of men.