Editor's Choice Volume I - Slow summer Kisses, Kilts & kraken, Negotiating point (13 page)

“I love you,” Mike said.

She shrugged. “I’m a geek who likes a challenge. I thought having access to cell carrier networks would come in handy at some point. If they use a different phone, I’ll have to get that number.”

Mike’s cell phone rang and he scooped it up. “Blocked number.”

They’re early.
Interesting.

Leaping from her chair, Janet shooed Mike from his spot near the computer. Quick little woman, that one.

“If it’s them,” Gavin said to Mike, “don’t agree to anything. Fact finding here.”

Mike hit the speaker button. “Michael Taylor.”

“This is Joe Smith from Freedom Today. If you meet our demands, your wife will be returned unharmed.”

“Put her on.”

“No.”

“I’m not agreeing to any demands until I know she’s okay.”

Muffled voices came through the speaker. Joe Smith probably put his hand over the phone.
More than one captor.
And Joe Smith? Could he have picked a better fake name? Totally generic.

More muffled sounds filled the otherwise silent office and Mike tapped his fingers against the edge of his desk. For some reason, Gavin thought of the fingerprints that would be left on the glass. He supposed it was easier than staring at Mike. Who waited. For the sound of his pregnant wife’s voice.

Gavin breathed in when his mind flashed to his mother crying herself to sleep after his dad had died. As he’d done many times, he stored the bits of memory, one by one, into his brain’s hideaways.

The muffling noise from the other end of the phone disappeared. A beep sounded. Speakerphone. “Hi,” Roxann said in her steady, control-freak voice.

Mike straightened, closed his eyes for a second and dropped his head to his chest. In that moment, Gavin imagined a bizarre combination of grief and respite pressing his boss further and further into turmoil.

“Are you hurt?” Mike asked his wife.

“No. I’m okay.”

“That’s enough.” Male voice—
Joe Smith.
“Now you’ve spoken to her. She is unharmed and if you want her to stay that way, her newspaper will run an article we’ve prepared in tomorrow’s paper. It will be emailed to your account. By 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, we want Jackson Spelling released from prison.”

Gavin rolled his hand for Mike to keep talking. Any new info would help.

“Look,” Mike said, but the line went dead.

He squeezed the phone, his fingers straining against it before he ran his thumb over the screen. Along with the connection, his link to Roxann had been severed and it left Gavin with a gut-burn that might tear a hole in him.

Just get her back.

“She’s okay,” Gavin said. “And we’ve already got a lead on her location. They’ll call again when the email is sent. They’re gonna want to make sure you got it.”

“Right.” Mike set the phone on the desk with precision care, his gaze not leaving it.

Horrible fucking pressure.

“Got it!” Janet yelled and they both swiveled to see her face lit with her never-ending energy. “It’s the same location as before. That’s where they have her.”

Mike bent over, straddled his hands over his thighs and stared at the floor. He glanced back to Janet. “Whatever I’m paying you, you’re getting a raise.”

Then he marched out of the room.

* * *

Feeling the electric whoosh of her success, Janet jumped from the chair, reached across the desk and high-fived Gavin. Their hands connected and he wrapped his fingers around hers, sending her filthy mind back to the blazing kiss they’d shared three weeks earlier after working a kidnap and ransom case.

At thirty-two she remained the lone woman on the team and, as such, worked hard to ensure the burly, manly men saw her as an essential asset rather than a woman who happened to be there for their amusement. At least until Mr. Sexy Galore Gavin Sheppard came aboard. James Bond may have had Pussy Galore, but Janet Fink had Sexy Galore. This man, with his Mediterranean looks—dark hair and eyes and smooth olive skin—could make a smart girl turn stupid.

Fast.

Be a smart girl.

Maybe that hand squeeze was just a friendly thing. Sort of an I-don’t-want-to-do-you-but-you-did-good squeeze. Yes, that was it. She’d done her job well. Something she always strived for.

But then he pinned those sultry brown eyes on her and she started to rethink the idea that maybe he
did
want to do her. Touching him had been an epic mistake. According to her brain anyway. Her body had differing opinions. After another paralyzing second of heat pouring from his hand, he let go.

Double darn.
Heaven help her, she didn’t know what she wanted.
Touch me, don’t touch me. Touch me, don’t touch me.
This was what she should have experienced in high school when everyone’s hormones but hers bugged out. Back then she found solace hiding behind her computer because the short, bean-pole geek would rather talk code than boys. The girls thought her weird and the boys found little appreciation for her A-cup breasts. Pretty much, everyone ignored her.

“Thank you,” he said.

She rubbed her hands together to replace the warmth that had abandoned her. “We’ll get her back. I know we will.”

I just have to keep my hands off you until we do.

Chapter Two

In the abandoned barn Vic had located adjacent to the kidnapper’s location, Janet plugged the last cord into a video screen and pressed the button. The cameras being placed in various locations would feed images of the house to them.

The screen blinked and the front of the kidnappers’ house appeared.

She moved to the next task of powering up the other monitors while scanning the remaining available space. The barn sat on twelve acres of bank-owned farmland for sale. A shame for the owners, but for today, Taylor Security appreciated the use of the open two-story structure. She drew a breath of hot, stale air.

They’d have to leave the barn door cracked to air the place out.

Not wanting to risk any police officers checking up on them, they’d made sure to park their cars behind the barn and out of sight from the road. All they needed was a sheriff traipsing in and seeing a full command center.

Janet took a minute to survey the folding tables covered with electronic equipment and, given her time restraints, considered her handiwork a job well-done. Generators were such a lovely invention. How she love, love, loved her job.

They’d even brought in a cot in case they were here for days and needed naps. She knew from the South America trip Gavin could work on minimal sleep, but he didn’t pretend to be Superman. He knew when his body needed rest. Another thing she admired about him. Some of the guys on the team pushed themselves to the brink to prove they were the biggest and the baddest. Gavin didn’t bother. He knew his worth. Seriously, could there be anything hotter than a man comfortable with himself?

A trickle of sweat dripped down the side of her face and she swiped at it.

Sexy Galore didn’t seem to be sweating. In this heat, how could that be? The short-sleeved golf shirt he’d changed into didn’t have one ring of sweat. Anywhere. While she looked like she’d just run thirty miles.

Vic strode through the open barn door. “Hey, head-shrinker.”

“Hey, knuckle-dragger,” Gavin shot back and Janet’s knees crumbled more than a little because—
wow—
the man just, for the
second
time, called one of the toughest guys on earth a knuckle-dragger.

Sexy.

Galore.

“Nice.” Vic gave a half grin. “Your cell phone issue is taken care of.”

“Signal jammer?”

“No. It’s something Gizmo has been working on. The device sends calls straight to voice mail and blocks anything outgoing. The hostage takers can retrieve voice mails and that’s it. They won’t be able to figure out why their phones aren’t ringing.”

“I love Gizmo,” Janet said. “The phone still works so we’re not breaking any laws by jamming the signal.”

“You got it, sister.”

Gavin nodded. “Have your team ready in case I need them.”

“On it.” He glanced around at the equipment. “Where are we?”

Janet held her hand high. Being the shrimp she was, sometimes it was the only way to get anyone’s attention. “I just confirmed the land line has been shut off. The house is owned by a Madeline Burger. Well, it was owned by her. She died three weeks ago.”

“Whoa,” Vic said.

“No idea how these people came to be squatting in this dead woman’s house but I’m working on it. Turns out Freedom Today has a Facebook page. They’re some kind of political group, but I can’t get a handle on what exactly their platform is. As soon as I get in there, I might be able to see who the members are and find someone with the last name Burger. Anyway, the land line for the phone was shut off by…” she checked her notes, “…Collin Burger. According to the guy at the phone company, Collin is Madeline’s son.”

“And you got this information how?” Gavin asked.

“We provide security for the phone company’s corporate headquarters. Mike called the CEO and did his thing.”

Gavin smiled. “I love how you people work.”

Sexy Galore must still be adjusting to civilian life. In his FBI world, warrants were everything. Without a warrant or with a minor language issue on a warrant, the whole case could be blown to bits. One minute piece of evidence collected outside the scope of a warrant could make—or break—a case.

Vic’s team didn’t worry about warrants.

They didn’t have to.

Gavin turned to Vic. “I’m about to call one Joe Smith and see if he’ll talk to me. Did you set up my perimeter?”

Vic jerked his head. “You got a three-sixty. My guys are out of sight, but nobody is going to leave or enter that property without us knowing it.”

“Good. Tell your men to stand down. No firing. Let me initiate contact and see if they’ll talk to me. Clear?”

If at all possible, the air in the barn compressed and became more stifling. Janet eased out a breath. Leaves rustled in the wind outside the open door, but somehow it intensified the searing friction bouncing off the two men in front of her. Michael may have been the one to woo her from the CIA four years ago, but she’d been part of Vic’s elite team of spec ops guys since the day she had walked through the door. She knew him well enough to know he was about to lose his patience.

Vic stepped closer, got right into Gavin’s face, and her feet glued themselves to the floor. Not that she—with her diminutive stature—would be able to get between them, but still, to be rendered immobile? She dragged her gaze from Gavin to Vic and back while a tingling buzz flicked at her skin. Was it a sick thing that she found this mildly intoxicating?

Vic stood a good five inches taller than Gavin, but Sexy Galore took no garbage from him. Rather than trying to bulk up to compete with the guys on the team, Gavin had dropped weight since coming to Taylor Security. She liked his coiled muscles opposed to the hulking, beefed-up look most of the guys on the team went for.

Of course, she spent far too much time studying Gavin’s physique from far too many angles.

Feel that, Janet?
It’s a smart girl turning stupid.

“Yeah, we’re clear,” Vic said. “But if I think your therapy session is crashing, we’re going tactical.
Clear?
”

Michael entered the barn, saw the two men toe-to-toe and shook his head. “What the hell is this?”

“Nothing,” Vic said. “We’re setting ground rules.”

“What’s your hurry?” Gavin asked, his eyes still on Vic. “You can always kill these guys tomorrow.”

Game on.
Movement in her limbs returned and Janet shot her hands toward the ceiling. They’d destroy each other if this kept up. “Stop! Everybody take a breath.”

But Michael charged over to where they stood. “This pissing match ends now.” He turned to Vic. “You want ground rules. Gavin gets until nightfall to talk these assholes down. My pregnant wife is in that house and you wanna bust in there with automatic weapons? I don’t think so. Too risky. We’ve contained them, we’ve limited their phone use and we know Roxann is doing reasonably well. For now, this is Gavin’s show. If he can initiate contact and talk these whack-jobs into letting my wife go, we’ll call it a good day. A fucking excellent day. Until then, you offer support when necessary. By nightfall, if there’s no movement, we’ll revisit going tactical. Until then, everybody shuts up. Am
I
clear?”

Without moving an inch, Gavin said, “I’m good.”

Vic spun on his booted feet and stormed toward the door. “Roger that.”

Michael watched him go, shook his head and turned to Janet. “What do we know about this group?”

“My CIA guy doesn’t have anything on them. They seem to be grass-roots. No history of violence.”

“Which is good,” Gavin added.

Michael nodded. “Right. Are you ready to make contact?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll do my best to stay out of here. I need you focused and I don’t want my emotions in the way. There’s a truck stop down the road. I’ll squat there, but you need to keep me updated. Often.”

They waited for Michael to leave the barn. Janet started to speak, but Gavin held his hand up. When a car door slammed, he turned back to her. “I wanted him out of earshot. Do we know anything about Joe Smith? Any priors? Anything?”

Janet shifted to her laptop. “
His
Facebook page I’ve already gotten into.”

“I guess these people like Facebook.”

“They do. Social media is the bomb when it comes to spreading your message. And, believe it or not, Joe Smith is his real name.”

“Fantastic. Leave it to me to get a guy with an unbelievably common name. It’ll take a year to gather intel on him.”

“So,
anyway,
Mr. Negative, I was able to grab his birthday from his account. I don’t know why people insist on putting the year there. It makes it so much easier for hackers.”

“Uh, hello? Facebook?”

“Right. Sorry. I asked a friend at the PD to run a check on his name and birthday. Assuming the birthday he listed is the actual, there were no matches for our Joe Smith. No criminal history. We know he was on the chess team in high school, went to USC and was a math major. He’s just a general geek.”

Gavin leaned back on the makeshift desk. “In other words, he seems like a straight-up guy. So what happened? How the hell did he get mixed up with this group and kidnap a publisher?”

She knew exactly what happened. Geeks understood other geeks. Her guess was he wanted to fit in somewhere. “He probably wanted to be part of something. Maybe he’s a little vulnerable and met someone who followed this group. This group took one look at Joe Smith and saw a malleable person desperate for friends.”

Gavin tilted his head, considered it. “Okay. I’ll go with that.”

She stared at her notepad, flicked her finger against it. “Us geeks, sometimes we just want to be part of something that feels like it matters. To belong.”

And, oh, my God. Did she really cough that hairball up? Pathetic, lonely elf misunderstood by all. Swallowing the humiliation, she met Gavin’s gaze.

He twisted his lips and tilted his head for a second. Studying her. As a former FBI hostage negotiator with a master’s degree in psychology, he knew how to actively listen and study people’s habits. That’s what good negotiators did—they watched, they listened, they stayed calm.

Don’t you dare shrink my head, Sexy.

“What you’re telling me, is I can connect with him on the wanting-to-belong angle.”

Yes, Sexy Galore, you are a brilliant man for not making me feel like a freak.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. The way to get inside this guy’s head is to make him think you understand what it’s like to be an outcast due to his brainiac status.”

Gavin jotted notes. “I can do that. Does he have any hang-ups? Hates swearing? A religious zealot? Anything?”

“Nothing on that yet. I can go through his updates on Facebook and see if there are any hot buttons.”

“Good. Let’s roll. You ready?”

She spun to her laptop, fingers poised. “Ready.”

* * *

Gavin dialed the number Janet had provided for Joe Smith and waited to see how this opening volley would go. More than likely, Joe would nearly soil himself when he realized who was on the other end of the line. After said soiling, Joe would hang up.

“Hello?” came a man’s voice.

“Joe?” Gavin asked, sounding like the guy’s best friend.

“Yeah. Who’s this?”

“This is Gavin Sheppard. I work for Taylor Security—”

Click. Gavin sighed—
let’s play ball—
and redialed. He turned to Janet. “He hung up.”

“Of course he did.”

The phone rang again, but went to voice mail. “He cannot believe I’m going away. Can he?”

Gavin settled into the folding chair behind him and hit Redial. Dipshit Joe Smith didn’t know Gavin had the tenacity to sit here all day dialing this number. He wouldn’t do that though. Soon, he’d deliver a throw phone, a dedicated line allowing the kidnappers to speak only with him.

He’d spend a week talking a hostage taker down if it avoided tactical assault. Vic was the tactical guy, always ready to take up arms. In the six months of Gavin’s employ at Taylor Security, he and Vic hadn’t yet figured out how to merge their expertise and play nice. Gavin didn’t necessarily have a problem with going tactical, but it meant all other attempts to resolve the situation had failed.

Gavin didn’t like to fail.

Going tactical also carried the highest risk of someone getting hurt. Or killed. In this case, that someone could be Roxann Taylor.

He redialed. Nothing.

Gavin stood, slipped a radio head-set on, walked across the width of the barn to the rectangular table where he found the case containing the throw phone. He grabbed it and the bullhorn sitting next to it. “I’ll be back. Hopefully.”

And when had he become so warped that he could be sarcastic about this? Probably after the hostage situation in Arkansas ten months ago. That fiasco wasn’t his fuck-up but he was one of four FBI negotiators assigned to it.

The twelve dead people, all members of a cult murdered by their leader, were his motivating factor for leaving the Bureau after twelve years. At thirty-eight years old, he’d been aging fast in a job that was bleeding the life out of him.

Enter Mike Taylor and his ridiculously appealing offer.

“Be careful,” Janet called after him.

“I’ll use the guys to cover me. They’ll do that stacking thing they love with the shields and I’ll throw the phone through a window.”

Janet jumped from her chair. “Hang on. You need a vest and helmet.”

She grabbed a vest from the box on the floor and held it up for him. He propped the bullhorn under the arm where he held the throw phone and slid his free arm into the tac vest.

“Now the other arm,” she said.

“Yes, Mommy.”

She laughed. “Come to Mama, sweetheart.”

Maybe she was kidding, but dammit if that loop in his head of all the things he’d like to do to her didn’t start spinning out of control. Visions of her under him,
naked,
whispering those same words, flashed.
Jeez, I’m a pervert.
He had to stop that loop. No matter how he sliced it—and he’d sliced it plenty—she was a support person. Maybe he wasn’t her supervisor, but he held a senior position in this company and wasn’t about to become the clichéd skirt-chasing executive. Right now, he had to find a way to bury, to
drown,
his personal feelings. The memory of that kiss three weeks ago needed to drown with it.