Love Inspired Suspense May 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Trail of Evidence\Gone Missing\Lethal Exposure (42 page)

“Jack,” she called, trying not to panic. “Where are you?”

Two strong hands lifted her to her feet. “I'm here,” he said gently. “Don't worry. I'll get us out.”

He used his cell phone to shine a flashlight around the elevator, letting it rest on the emergency telephone that hung on the wall by the buttons.

He picked up the red handset. “Hello,” he said loudly into the speaker. “Can anyone hear me? We're trapped in an elevator at the
Liberty News
building in Blountstown.”

Rebecca looked at him expectantly, but he shook his head. “Nothing. I don't even know if it's working.”

“What's going on?” she asked, looking at his face lit up by the glow from his cell phone. “I think we're in trouble here.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and looked directly into her face. “I won't let anything happen to you, Rebecca,” he said solemnly. “I promise.”

As if to mock his words, the elevator began to shudder again, falling a couple of feet with two quick jumps. Rebecca's knees hit the floor as she felt her stomach dropping away with the sudden movement. She reached up to take Jack's hand, and he pushed her down to the floor.

“Stay down,” he said. “It's safer.”

Rebecca knelt on the floor and assumed the most natural position—one of prayer. She closed her eyes and asked God to deliver them from the danger that had sought them out. She had prayed hundreds of times while on photography assignments, surrounded by war and destruction, and the Lord had never failed her. She just needed to put her faith in Him. Within moments, the elevator had settled into a stable position, with no hint of movement. Rebecca strained her ears for the toe-curling sound of metal grinding against metal, but it appeared to have abated. She looked up at Jack, who had placed his cell phone on the floor and was attempting to pry open the doors with his fingertips. His biceps flexed with the powerful effort. When the doors eventually slowly opened, he was faced with a bare brick wall.

Jack looked at the ceiling. “I can climb out onto the roof and see how far from the next floor we are. We may be able to climb up.”

Rebecca looked down at her bandaged hand. Even though the injury was slight, the strength in her left hand was decreased. She didn't know if she was capable of climbing through wires and cables in a dangerous elevator shaft.

A muffled voice in the darkness provided a beacon of hope. “Hello. Is anyone in there?”

“Yes,” Jack called. “There are two people in here. Can you help us out?”

“Stay where you are,” the voice called back. “I'll activate the emergency override and manually wind you down, but be patient, because it's mighty slow.”

Rebecca then recognized the voice as Hal, the building security guard. “Thank you, Hal,” she shouted, jumping to her feet. She quickly added in a murmur, “And thank You, God, for sending him.”

As the elevator began its sluggish, shuddering descent to the ground, Jack held Rebecca close in his arms. When the motion became a little smoother, she pushed against his torso and placed herself to his side, holding on to a rail on the wall for balance. He mirrored her stance, remaining by her side in the darkness until the familiar sight of the white foyer came into view.

Rebecca felt as though she was emerging from a cave. They had been trapped inside for only around fifteen minutes, but their eyes had obviously adjusted to the darkness. They both instinctively used their hands as shields against the glare of the sun.

Hal took her arm as she stepped out onto the polished marble floor. “I've never seen an incident like this before,” he said. “It's the strangest thing.” He took off his cap to scratch his bald head. “Hope you two aren't too shaken up.”

“We're fine. Thanks, Hal,” Rebecca said with a voice that was as calm as she could manage. “Please make sure you stop anyone else from using this elevator until it's been thoroughly checked and repaired.”

“Of course, Mrs. Grey,” Hal replied. “I'll speak to Mr. Orwell right away.”

The mention of Simon's name seemed to spur Jack's resolve to make a speedy exit from the building. “Let's get outta here,” he said. “Before anything else happens.”

“You'll get no argument from me,” she said, heading for the revolving door.

When they stepped out into the crisp air, Rebecca's body gave a shiver. It wasn't just the February day that caused her chills. She was shaken up by the thought that somebody was tracking them, putting their lives in danger, possibly trying to silence her forever. Jack took off his jacket and laid it over her shoulders, rubbing her arms to keep them warm.

“Stay here while I bring the car around,” he said. “You should keep out of sight.”

She nodded, glancing back to see Hal behind the front desk talking into the telephone, no doubt informing Simon that the elevator had suffered a serious malfunction, trapping the paper's lead photographer inside. But would Simon be surprised? She found herself questioning whether Jack's distrust of her editor was justified after all.

Then she caught sight of Jack's yellow car in the corner of the lot. She reached into his jacket pocket and found the Porsche keys nestled inside.

“Hey, Jack,” she called after him. “Why don't you drive your car, and I'll drive mine?”

He spun around, and his eyes locked on the car keys in her hand. She put her thumb on the black fob that activated the unlock mechanism on the doors. Jack broke into a run and shouted, “No! Somebody might have been here while we were inside!” but it was too late. She had already pressed the button.

In the next moment, she saw a flash of yellow bounce before her eyes as the car skyrocketed into the air on a ball of flames. The shock wave took her clean off her feet, and Jack's arms wrapped themselves around her while she was in the air. The last thing she felt was his body go limp as they both fell hard to the ground.

FOUR

J
ack struggled to open his eyes. He couldn't remember where he was. He heard voices talking quietly above the hum of busy background activity. He smelled the air: starched sheets and disinfectant. He must be in a hospital.

His mind flickered with images of his six-man SEAL unit, scouting out the Tora Bora cave complex in Afghanistan. There had been an explosion. He remembered blood and severed limbs, but the fog in his mind wouldn't clear. Where were his men now? If he had been injured in a gun battle or by an incendiary device, he might have been taken prisoner. He forced his lids open, trying to assess whether this was an enemy medical facility or an American base. He saw a machine by his bed, trailing wires to his chest. He reached up and pulled the suction cups from his body, sending the machine whirring into a monotone flat line.

He was suddenly surrounded by men and women in medical clothing, pushing him back on the bed. He listened carefully to their voices: they were speaking English with what sounded like American accents. But he couldn't be entirely sure. He used all his strength to push himself forward and try to swing his legs over the edge of the bed. His head throbbed in rhythm with his pulse, and it hurt.

“Where are my soldiers?” he slurred. “Where is Ian? He's hurt.”

“Please sir,” a voice said above him. It was a young woman, wearing pink scrubs. “You're experiencing flashbacks. You're in a hospital in Blountstown, Florida. You're safe. You suffered a head injury when your car exploded.”

These words were enough to allow reality to flood through his body, bringing him sharply back into the present. The chain of memories dropped down like dominoes in his mind—the Dark Skies mission, his best friend stepping on a land mine, his return to America to take care of Rebecca and the girls, the intruder in her house, the potential auction of stolen Iraqi artwork and his car being planted with a bomb. All these returning memories made the urge to stand become even greater. He must find Rebecca. He couldn't let Ian down. He had made an oath.

“Rebecca,” he said, pushing the nurse's hands from his body. His shirt was gone, and his chest was covered in tiny marks where gravel had entered his skin. “Where is she?”

The nurse in the pink scrubs pursed her lips and made a shushing noise. “She's fine, Mr. Jackson. She's waiting in the family room for you to wake up. You shielded her from the blast.”

He let his body flop back onto the bed. “What a relief,” he said quietly, closing his eyes. He opened them again and looked at the nurse. “Is anybody with her?”

The nurse attached a cuff to his arm to take his blood pressure. He felt the band squeeze his biceps tight with the pressure. “She's currently with someone from the military, I believe.”

He yanked his head from the pillow. “Who?”

The nurse removed the cuff and checked the readout. “Your blood pressure is a little low, Mr. Jackson. I recommend you take things easy for a few days.”

He didn't care about his blood pressure. He repeated the question. “Who is with Rebecca?”

“His name is Mr. Finch,” she replied. “He arrived here a little while ago.”

“Darius Finch?” Jack asked loudly. “Chief Petty Officer Darius Finch?”

Chief Finch was one of the senior members of the Dark Skies team, although he never got his hands dirty on the ground. He was known for his brains rather than his brawn and had been the master tactician behind their mission to terminate an insurgent commander in Afghanistan who was systematically destroying girls' schools across the region. Darius had planned the entire operation with superb precision, leaving nothing to chance. The only thing he couldn't plan for was the presence of land mines. That was always going to be an unquantifiable danger. And Ian had paid the price for the entire team.

The nurse shook her head. “I'm not sure who he is, exactly. If you wait here, I'll go check for you.”

Jack shifted on the bed and pushed himself to an upright position. “That's very kind of you ma'am, but I think I'll go check for myself.”

The nurse pressed her hand on his shoulder. “We recommend you stay in your hospital bed for the next twenty-four hours.” She clearly got the impression that he did not intend to take her advice. “We obviously can't stop you from leaving, but head injuries can be complicated, so we'd like to be on the safe side.”

He lay back, and the nurse seemed appeased. She scribbled some notes onto his medical chart and clipped it to the edge of the bed before walking from the room. He heard her shoes squeaking on the tiled floor in the corridor. The other staff had already left the room, so Jack was free to rise from the bed without any interference. He stood on his bare feet, feeling a little woozy, and grabbed a rail for support until the sensation passed. He looked around the room for something to wear, realizing that he couldn't very well walk through the corridors in just his jeans. His gaze came to rest on a man's hooded jacket hung up on a peg in the room opposite. He darted across the corridor and into the room, noticing that the rumpled bed was empty. He picked up the jacket, slipped it over his bare torso and zipped it up to his neck. He figured he could return it later.

The tile floor was cold beneath his feet so he darted back into his own room to retrieve his sneakers. He found them lying beside the bed, and he slipped his feet into them, feeling grittiness on the soles inside, probably from the ground where he had been thrown.

Then he walked out of the room and strode purposefully along the corridor, checking each open door. He caught sight of himself in a mirror and did a double take. His usually tousled hair was pressed flat against his head, matted with blood, and his face was slightly swollen on one side where he had hit the concrete. But at least his injuries meant that Rebecca wasn't the one who had woken up in a hospital bed. It could have been so much worse.

At the very end doorway he saw her. She was sitting, curled up in a chair in the corner of the family room, looking sadder than he had seen her in a very long time. He hated to see such unhappiness on her face again, especially after she finally seemed to be smiling again. Her white shirt and blue jeans were covered in grime, but there didn't seem to be a mark on her skin. Sitting opposite her was the unmistakable figure of Chief Darius Finch, in civvies rather than the khaki uniform that Jack was more used to seeing him wear. When Rebecca saw Jack in the doorway, she jumped up from her chair and rushed into his arms.

“Oh, Jack, I've been so worried,” she said, embracing him. He flinched with the stinging pain from the gravel in his chest, and she pulled away quickly. “I'm so sorry. You were knocked out by a piece of debris from the explosion.” Tears filled her eyes. “You stopped it from falling on me.”

He placed his hands on each of her cheeks and examined her face and head thoroughly, ensuring there were no marks or signs of injury. Then, finally he looked deeply into her eyes, checking that she was focusing properly and not concussed. Her skin had taken on an alabaster hue, making the pastel blue of her eyes almost too intense to gaze at for a long time.

She pulled his hands away from her cheeks. “I'm fine, Jack. The doctors checked me over already.” She held his hands in hers. “Really, I'm totally fine. It's you we should be concerned about.”

“You look pale,” he said.

She let out a deep breath. “Of course I'm pale. A car just exploded right in front of my eyes.”

At that moment, Darius Finch stood from his chair. “The police believe that the cause of the blast was faulty wiring, leading to a spark getting into your fuel tank.”

Jack folded his arms. “If that's the case, Chief, then why are you here?”

Darius wove his way through the chairs in the room. “Because you and I both know that this explanation is highly unlikely.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at the chief. Although Darius was part of the Dark Skies mission, he had never really been considered one the team. He had transferred into the SEALs from the United States Marines as a strategist. Being a little too old to fight, Darius's strength lay in the planning of missions. He treated combat groups as expendable, and his reaction to Ian's death had been one of remarkable indifference. His coldness had made him an unpopular man with the soldiers who put themselves on the front line, and Jack's unpleasant memories flooded back on seeing the chief standing in front of him.

“How did you get here so fast?” Jack asked. “You're still based up at Little Creek, Virginia, right?”

Darius ran his hand over his neatly shorn head. Darius had the kind of hair that Jack's father would call “a haircut you could set your watch by.” “I was on vacation in Palm Coast.” He smiled. “It was fortunate that I was only a couple of hours' drive away.”

Jack's head began to pulsate with his injury. He reached up and touched the gash, fingering the stitches that were securing the wound. “How did you know about the explosion?”

Rebecca put her hand on his shoulder. “I called him, Jack. I think we're out of our depth here. Someone clearly wants to stop me from revealing the photographs of the artworks from the palace in Iraq.” She went to stand close to him, and her voice changed to a whisper. “I thought I'd lost you.”

“I'm not out of my depth,” Jack said, wishing that Darius wasn't in the room with them. “I'm a trained SEAL, Bec. I wish you'd trusted in me before calling in reinforcements.”

A look of hurt swept over her face, and he regretted his words, but he wasn't sure that Darius Finch was someone he really wanted in his life again.

Darius clicked his tongue with impatience. “Can we please leave this hospital? I've never liked the smell of death.”

Jack shook his head at Darius's insensitivity. “Why should we trust you, Chief? You don't know anything about the situation.”

“Rebecca has told me everything,” he said. “And if someone in the military has been involved in the theft of art during warfare, then I want to investigate it thoroughly. I was there during Operation Iraqi Freedom, and it is my responsibility to ensure that any treasures rightfully belonging to the Iraqi people are returned to them without delay.”

Jack couldn't argue with anything that Darius was saying. “I totally agree,” he said. “I think we're in serious danger, and I need to ensure that Rebecca is protected at all times. Did you talk to the police?”

“I spoke to the police and accident investigators while you were out cold,” Darius replied. “The Porsche has been removed for thorough examination, and I suspect they'll find evidence of an explosive device, but with no security cameras overlooking the lot, it's doubtful they'll find the culprit.”

Rebecca stepped into the conversation. “The police have also spoken to the manager at the Regency auction house in New York.”

Jack breathed a sigh of relief. “And they've opened an investigation, I assume?”

Rebecca shook her head. “No. They say the paperwork for the art pieces all checks out, even though I think it's fake.”

She guided Jack to a chair and made him sit. “The palace where these pieces were taken was full of works of art, all owned by the Iraqi president. His surviving family has confirmed he held a secretive private collection that was probably purchased though the black market. They have no idea what happened to these pieces and couldn't identify them even if they were recovered. It's almost as though the thief knew exactly what pieces would be untraceable.”

“But you took photographs of them?” Jack asked. “So surely that's enough to prove they were there.”

“It's not as easy as that,” she replied. “Many works of art have similarities and are difficult to tell apart without expert examination. At the moment, all we have is a theory that the Regency auction house pieces match the ones taken from the palace. And because the paperwork for the art is so well forged, the police have no evidence of a crime being committed.”

“So where do we go from here?” Jack asked. “Because I'm not going to let someone stop us from digging up the truth.”

“We need to cast reasonable doubt on the origin on the art coming up for auction. If we can do that, the pieces will be seized and their history investigated.”

“And how do we do that?”

“By having my photographs examined by an art expert and getting a comparison against the pictures in the brochure. If a professional art historian believes there may be a match between the two, the police will have probable cause to apply for a warrant to seize the artwork.”

Jack stood up. “Then we need to find those negatives immediately.” He swayed a little and held on to a chair close by, determined not to show any trace of weakness from his injury. “Let's get out of here.”

* * *

Rebecca followed Darius down the corridor. She was sandwiched between the chief and Jack, shielded from both the front and back. She sensed Jack's irritation with her for telephoning his old SEAL commander, but Darius was the only person she could think of to turn to. She'd met Chief Finch briefly at Ian's funeral, and he had given her his cell number, telling her to call if she ever needed help. And she sure needed help now.

When Jack had been lying on the ground at the parking lot, knocked out cold with blood oozing from a wound on his head, she had kneeled beside him and screamed. Simon had come running from the building and comforted her until the emergency services arrived, but all she could think of was how history was repeating itself. Seeing Jack on the ground, eyes closed and still, had reminded her of the husband she had lost. She wondered if Jack was also going to be snatched from her without warning, without a chance to say goodbye. His near brush with death had brought home to her how easily it could happen again to any man in her life. It further cemented her belief that God's plan did not include another husband.