COLE (Dragon Security Book 1) (15 page)

Amber

Time seemed fluid all of a sudden. Sometimes I would wake in the dark, and I’d think I was back in that trailer and it wasn’t Cole lying beside me, but his brother. But then I’d roll over and see the now familiar tattoo on his upper arm, the United States Marine Corp emblem, and I’d be filled with such a rush of relief that I couldn’t breathe for a minute. It happened during the day sometimes, too. I’d be in the nursery with the baby and hear the door close downstairs. He’d be coming back from the grocery store or from visiting with friends, and I’d be convinced that it would be Peter who’d come through the door. But it was always Cole.

I don’t know. There was this thing in the back of my mind that kept telling me that this was too good to be true. That a man like Cole couldn’t possibly want me as much as he seemed to. That someday it wouldn’t be Cole coming through the door, but someone—his sister, maybe—coming to tell me he wanted me out.

It didn’t help that I was completely dependent on him. I felt like that took his choice away. So I’d been searching for a job for the last week or so, looking on line and then slipping out during the day from time to time, making up excuses, to go on job interviews.

That’s what I was doing now, riding the city bus to an interview at Rice University. Ironic, yeah, but the cafeteria was looking for an assistant manager, and I thought that my experience at the diner over the years might, almost, qualify me for the position. I must have convinced them, too, because they called this morning with the request for an interview.

It would be a good job, daytime hours. I could get Mrs. Bradford to babysit. She’s already offered a dozen times over to babysit whenever. She adored PJ, coming over at least twice a week to see him. She’d caught us by surprise just this week, knocking while Cole and I were making out on the couch. We seemed to do that a lot lately. He was almost insatiable. And it was…I blushed as a smile bloomed on my lips. The idea that he wanted me that much, that he couldn’t keep his hands off of me…it made me feel like a queen. As if I hadn’t grown up on the wrong side of town, but that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. As if I was better than I was.

He told me all the time how beautiful he thought I was. How good a mother and how kind a person I was. How thoughtful he thought I was. No one had ever said those things to me before. But the way Cole said them silenced all the negative voices in my head for a while. No one had ever done that, either.

Sometimes when I thought about Peter, I felt a little guilty for falling so hard for his brother. But then this part of me that was unbiased by both my experiences and my emotions, pointed out that Peter was simply being nice in the things he said and did. He was a kind man and he saw a broken girl. His instinct was to try to put her back together again. That’s what he’d been doing with the time he took to talk to me, in the encouragement he gave me. He saw me as a project, as someone he could help. Things might have shifted a little after the night we spent together. He might have begun to see me as something more than broken. But I don’t think he would have ever looked at me the way Cole did. We might have been together, because of PJ, and we might have had a good life. But it would never have been as good as it was with Cole.

Peter wasn’t the Bradford I was meant to be with. As grateful as I was for his encouragement and for the perfect little boy he gave me, I wasn’t in love with him. I could see that so clearly now.

I loved Cole with everything I had and everything I was.

I smiled again, feeling a little like a lunatic. I was in love. I never thought I could ever say that.

My life had taken such a turn these last months, no one could ever have predicted them. Watching Cole with PJ, watching him just move around the kitchen, or sitting on the couch watching his sports, I found myself wondering what I’d done to have such a man in my life. The only thing that would make my life more perfect would be if I could show Cole that I could take care of myself, to take that element out of our relationship. Then we would both know that we were together out of choice, not necessity.

I could feel it in him, the resistance when we talked about the future or when I whispered words of affection to him in the dark of the night. Something was holding him back and this was all I could imagine that it was. So I wanted to show him, to prove that I was all in.

The bus came to my stop. I got up and fished the cell phone Mrs. Bradford had given me out of my pocket to check my texts. She was watching PJ. I told her I was meeting a friend. I told Cole that she was taking us shopping. I hoped that they didn’t check in with each other.

There was a picture of PJ smiling at the camera in my text messages. I laughed, the people around me not even giving me a second look.

Doing great. Have a good time,
Mrs. Bradford had written.

I was glad that PJ liked his grandmother. It bothered me at first, that whole I-want-my-baby-to-only-like-me mentality getting in the way. But I knew, maybe more than anyone, that PJ needed as many people around him as possible who loved him. And he was certainly loved.

I checked the directions the manager of the cafeteria gave me and headed off, crossing onto the Rice campus, feeling almost like a student as I joined a few students walking to class.  I was about to turn into the walkway that led to the right building when someone bumped into me from behind.

“Hello, Amber,” a deep voice said. “Come with me quietly and I won’t shoot you right here.”

I started to turn, but then felt the familiar shape of a gun barrel pressed into my back.

Not again!

“What do you want from me?”

“We want to know what Peter Bradford told you about us.”

“He didn’t.”

The man pushed me into a space between two buildings, a narrow space that was barely wide enough for the two of us to pass comfortably.

“You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself wrapped up in, Amber,” he said close to my ear. “Even Peter couldn’t appreciate what we’re really up to. If he’d known, he would have made sure you and everyone he cared about left this damn country. But even a guy as smart as him didn’t see it.”

“Please. I don’t know anything.”

“We’ll find out soon enough, won’t we?”

He pushed me forward. I stumbled, but he lifted me up. When we reached the end of the narrow alley, he shoved me into a waiting SUV. There were two more men inside, but I didn’t see their faces before someone covered my head with a dark bag.

“I have a baby…”

Megan

I was searching through my desk drawers for a pen when I happened to open the drawer where I’d stashed the gift for Amber that I’d found in Peter’s desk. A part of me wanted to open it, to see if there was something inside that was related to what he’d been investigating before he died. But my sense of respect for other people kicked in, reminding me that Amber came to us. She told us everything she knew as soon as she decided she could trust us. And she was with Cole. Like it or not, I had to trust her to share with us any information that might be inside this box.

I slipped it into my bag and snatched it up, deciding to call it a night. Sam was glaring at something as I stepped out my office door. It didn’t take long to figure out what it was. It was the same thing as always. Hayden was across the room, leaning close to one of the system operators, a pretty, college-age girl wearing a tight t-shirt and short skirt. I could feel the sexual tension from across the room.

“Ignore him,” I said, laying a hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“He’s a professional. He shouldn’t act that way in the office.”

“Yeah, well, he’s Hayden. He can’t help himself.”

“Maybe.”

Sam kind of shook herself and then focused on me, her big eyes filled with so much emotion that I could feel the weight of it as her eyes rested on me.

“Going home?”

“Yeah. You?”

She shook her head. “I want to finish working on Peter’s hard drive.”

“There’s no rush, you know. It’s been sitting in his office for ten months. A few more days won’t hurt.”

“I know. But it’s not often you ask for my help.”

“No. Just every single day of my life.”

“Not like this.”

I pushed out my bottom lip as I tried to think of the right words to respond. But there didn’t seem to be any.

She touched my arm. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

“I’ll try.”

I was in my car a minute later, wondering what I should do for dinner. Then I remembered the gift and decided to run by Cole’s place. Maybe he’d have something hot on the stove when I got there.

He opened the door before I’d finished knocking, his eyes shifting from me to the elevator down the hall.

“Waiting for something?”

“I’m getting a little worried about Amber and the baby. They went shopping with Mom, but they should have been back by now.”

“Mom’s at home. I talked to her less than an hour ago.”

“She is?”

Cole turned and charged into his apartment, leaving me standing in the open doorway. I went inside, pushing the door closed with the back of my foot as I watched Cole grab his phone and dial.

“Mom? Is Amber with you?”

He waited for a second, the worry etched into his face growing deeper by the moment. He hung up without saying anything else.

“She left the baby with Mom and went out. Mom says she was meeting friends.”

“Maybe they’re running late. You know how women are when they get together.”

“Amber doesn’t have friends.”

He turned and surveyed the apartment for a long minute, snatching up a tablet that was sitting on the coffee table. I moved up behind him as he turned the thing on and moved through the different applications. He opened Amber’s mail and looked through it, highlighting one after another until he came to one from Rice University.

Thank you for your application…

That was all I read before Cole tossed the tablet on the couch.

“Goddamn it!”

“What?”

“She’s been looking for a job. She must have gone on an interview.”

“That’s good, right?”

“She left the apartment while I was at the grocery store this morning. At ten. She’s been gone for more than eight hours.”

I followed him out of the apartment, tugging my cell from my back pocket.

“Hayden? Get Dominic and meet us at Rice University.”

Cole drove too fast. I had to grab the dashboard a dozen times to keep from slamming my head against it. I wanted to tell him to slow down, but I knew it wouldn’t do me any good. We pulled into the parking lot at Rice, right outside the cafeteria. Cole jumped out of the car and caught a woman coming out the back door.

“Amber Zavalas had an interview here this morning? Could you tell me what time she left?”

The woman’s eyebrows rose. “She never showed up. It was a pity, too, because she was the best applicant we had.”

Cole turned to me, this look on his face that was a cross between absolute panic and I-told-you-so.

I had my cell phone in my hand again. Sam answered almost immediately.

“Call the bus depot. Ask them to quiz their drivers, the ones who drive the line between my parents’ house and Rice. Ask them if they saw a girl who fits Amber’s description riding the bus around ten-thirty this morning. Then call the hospitals, the police, see if they might have a report of a kidnapping or if they’ve got someone who fits Amber’s description. Okay?”

“Sure. Anything else?”

“See if you can access the security cameras at Rice and on the buildings nearby.”

“I’ll do that first.”

I hung up, watching Cole pace. I’d never seen him quite so agitated before.

“I’m sure she’s fine.”

“Then why do you have Sam looking for victims?” He glanced at me, but he didn’t wait for my answer. “They would have taken her away from here, but they probably wouldn’t have gone far. Are there any warehouses around here? Empty houses?”

It was a good question. I pulled up a real estate app on my phone that often came in handy for a variety of things, things different from what the app was designed to do. I found three houses within a mile radius.

Cole snatched the phone from me and raced to his car.

“Cole, we can’t just go rushing in like idiots! They’ll kill her if they see us coming.”

“Then we’ll have to make sure they don’t see us!”

Amber

We were only in the van for a few minutes. They lifted me up and set me on my feet on soft ground. Someone poked a gun into my side while someone else guided me with a hand on my arm. All these thoughts were going through my mind, fears of rape and torture chasing each other.

What did they want from me?

We went inside somewhere—the light coming through the bag suddenly disappeared—and the man with the hand on my arm pushed me down into a chair. Someone grabbed my arms and pulled them back behind me, trying them with plastic cable ties. Someone else did the same thing to my ankles at the same time. Then a voice, very close to my ear, whispered: “Just tell them what they want to know. Then they’ll let you go.”

I turned my head, but he was already gone.

They left me there alone for a long time. It felt like forever, but it was likely an hour or two. I could feel my breasts growing heavy with milk, my thoughts of my baby making the milk leak a little and my nipples tingle. I wondered what would happen to PJ if they didn’t let me go. I knew Mrs. Bradford had enough milk to keep him all day and probably all night. But after that she’d have to supplement something. Would he like it? Would he take it? Would he starve if they couldn’t find the right formula quickly enough? Or would he take well to it and forget all about me?

These thoughts weaved in and out of my head, making me more frightened than the thought that they might kill me. PJ was so much more important than I was.

The hood was suddenly ripped from my head. The light was too bright, burning my eyes. I turned my head away, but someone grabbed my chin and forced me to look forward.

“What did Peter say to you all those times you met with him at the diner in Ada?”

“Nothing,” I said, searching in the bright light for the source of the voice. “We talked about the town, about me. About the diner.”

“He didn’t tell you why he was there?”

“You took him home with you one night in late January. Why?”

“He was drunk.”

“What did he say?”

I bit my lip as my sight slowly came into focus. There were four men now. One leaning against the far wall. One sitting in a chair about eight feet in front and to the right of me. One pacing behind me, coming around where I could see him on every turn. And the one sitting in front of me, leaning forward in his chair as he waited for my answer.

They were all wearing masks. That was a good sign, right?

“Nothing. We didn’t talk.”

“He spent the night at your house.”

I looked him in the eye and tilted my head somewhat suggestively. “We didn’t talk.”

The guy behind him in the chair snorted with laughter.

My interrogator frowned, his eyes moving slowly over me. “You don’t seem like his type.”

“Yeah, well, rich guys like to slum it from time to time.”

“So the kid…”

“Yeah. Peter’s.”

He nodded, glancing back at his laughing friend. “We could use that.”

“Maybe.”

He focused on me again. “He gave you a package. What was in it?”

“Proof that someone was selling software from his company with illegal licenses.”

“Nothing else?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t understand most of it. That’s what his sister told me.”

The laughing man suddenly sat up a little straighter. I think I was the only one to notice, but it was such a sudden movement that I couldn’t believe no one else saw it.

“Why is his sister investigating his death now?”

“Because someone was following me. And someone tried to take me out of the mall at gunpoint.”

“What does she care about you?”

“She probably doesn’t. But she cares about her nephew.”

“But how did all that lead her back to Peter’s accident.”

I tilted my head, my eyes moving to the laughing guy, the way he was watching me with a new intensity.

“She thinks that it’s connected because I saw the bald guy who was following me talk to Peter at the diner in Ada.”

“Do you know what they talked about?” the laughing man asked.

“No.”

The two men exchanged a glance. The laughing man stood and came closer, tucking his hands into the front pockets of his jeans.

“I don’t think she knows anything.” He looked me over, his dark eyes barely visible behind his mask, his voice muffled. “And I think the Dragon people are chasing their tails. They couldn’t possibly know enough to prove anything.”

“But we can’t have them fishing in the dark. They might actually stumble across something.”

“It’s been nearly a year, man. There’s nothing left for them to find. What we didn’t cover up ourselves is probably compromised by time. I told you this was a fucking waste.”

The interrogator looked at me, really looked at me. It was almost as if he thought I might split open and spill all my secrets if he stared at me closely enough.

He sat back, his arms crossed over his chest.

“What does Megan Bradford know about her brother’s accident?”

The laughing man flinched at Megan’s name. Again, I didn’t think anyone else saw it. But I did in the way his eyes narrowed briefly, in the way his chin trembled just below the mask.

I found myself wondering how he knew her.

“I don’t know. She told her brother, Cole, that she didn’t think it was an accident and that she had the guys working for her check it out. But if she found something out, she didn’t tell him or me.”

“See?” the laughing man said, hitting the interrogator on the shoulder. “They don’t know shit. We covered our tracks.”

“Yeah, well, you said killing Peter would end the whole thing. You didn’t bother to inform us that he had a sister with an entire security firm at her fingertips.”

“There’s only so much they can find now. Once the other fools—”

“Don’t talk about it in front of her.”

The laugher looked at me for a long second, then shrugged his shoulders and moved back to his chair. He sat with his legs spread, looking for all the world like he didn’t care one cent about what was happening. But there was something in the way he was looking at me that told me he was fully invested in what was going on here.

The interrogator leaned close to me.

“If I find out that you know more than you’re saying, I’m coming after you. And not just you. That baby? I’ve killed more innocents than you could ever imagine. Taking a baby from his mother would be nothing to me. Do you understand?”

Fear paralyzed me. An image of PJ’s empty crib thrust itself through my mind. But I managed to nod.

The interrogator studied me for a long moment, then nodded. He stood and gestured to the man behind me. A second later, pain flashed through my head and the world went dark.