All I Need Is You (32 page)

“Where are we?” Mara asked.

Kay stood up and pressed her hands over her rapidly beating heart. “Eli’s panic room. He told me if the alarm ever went off again, this is where I should go.”

Mara looked around with wide eyes. “A panic room. Really?”
 

“Yeah. I just hope it was a false alarm.”

Kay looked at the panel in the wall that concealed the hidden door. She could only hope that if someone had broken in that they wouldn’t know how to break into the panic room as well.
 

She turned around and surveyed the room. Eli hadn’t shown her the inside when he’d given her the code and she hadn’t given it much thought. Now she was here and she had no idea what she was supposed to do now. It was a small room, about the same size as a bedroom. In the far corner there was a desk with two computer monitors and a phone. The sight of the phone made her realize she hadn’t brought her cell.
 

“Do you have your cell phone?” she asked Mara. She thought of hers, sitting on the night table next to her bed. If only she’d thought to grab it.

“I do. Should I call Matt? Or should we wait until they contact me? I’d hate to break his concentration at a critical moment.”

“Let’s wait and see what happens. Maybe this is a false alarm.”

Eli had told her to go straight to the panic room if the alarm ever went off again and to wait for him to come and get her. But how long was she supposed to wait? What if Eli was outside the door and needed help? How would she know?
 

“Wait, I just got a message from Matt.” Mara peered at the screen of her phone and then started typing. “I’m letting him know that we’re safe in the panic room.” Her phone beeped again. “They’ve got help on the way. He said for us to stay where we are until they come and get us.”

“Thank God!” Relief flooded through Kay’s veins, so fast and potent it made her dizzy.
 

She tiptoed closer to the door and placed her ear to the wall. Maybe if she could hear something it would tell her what was going on. Mara came closer, cradling Hope in her arms and rocking her slightly.
 

There were several loud pops similar to the sound of firecrackers. Except Kaylee was pretty sure no one was celebrating.
 

“Did you hear that?”

Mara looked back at her. The fear in her eyes echoed the rising hysteria Kaylee felt. They both backed away from the wall.
 

“Gunshots. It sounded like gunshots to me,” Mara whispered.

Kay took Hope from Mara and held her close. Hope peered around them curiously but didn’t cry. Kay buried her face in the baby’s soft curls. Even though help was on the way, she had no idea where Eli and Matt were or whether they’d been in the house when those gunshots had been fired. All she could do was hope and pray they were safe.

“Please let them be all right. Please.
Please
.”
 

AT THE SOUND of gunshots they all stopped and turned in unison. “Oh my God. What was that? Did he shoot Kay?” Sasha whimpered.

“Pull up the video feed,” Eli growled as he pushed to the front of the van. He wasn’t even sure he believed her story, but it was just crazy enough to be true. Either way he looked at it, Sasha had led trouble right to their doorstep. Even if she hadn’t meant to, if Kay got hurt then none of that mattered.

“He’s in the house. He broke the glass on the back door,” Matt said. He pointed to one of the screens. It was a grainy picture, but he could clearly see the entire back sliding glass door had been smashed in.
 

“I have to get in there.” He pulled out his weapon, satisfied that he at least hadn’t walked out of the house unarmed, then checked the clip. “I need more firepower.”
 

Tank took the Beretta he held and handed him the Glock 23 he always carried. “What’s our plan?”
 

“The plan is for me to go in there and put a round in whoever the hell just broke into my place.”

“You can’t go in there alone,” Matt said.

Eli climbed to the edge of the van and shoved the doors open. “Kay is in there and so is your sister. Do you want to sit here and talk about plans when they could have a gun to their heads right now?”
 

Tank grabbed him by the back of the collar and yanked him back into the van. His grip felt like iron. Eli was a solid 220 pounds of muscle, so it wasn’t often he was manhandled like a rag doll.
 

“Maybe you’re going to fire me after this, but I’m not letting you go in there alone,” Tank growled. “I get it. Your girl is in there. But you’re not doing her any favors by charging in with no plan in place. Kaylee is smart. I’m sure she heard the alarm go off.”

Tank let go and Eli rolled his shoulders. Adrenaline flowed through his system, and he checked his natural instinct to go for the other man’s throat. He was talking sense; intellectually he knew that. But Kay could be in trouble right now and he was standing outside
talking
. He needed to get in there. He needed to save her.

“Just let me go in and distract the shooter. You guys can come in after me.”
 

Tank clapped a hand on his shoulder. “If you go in there with no plan, you might as well just shoot yourself right here and now. Just wait.”

Matt’s phone beeped and he snatched it off his belt. “It’s Mara. The girls are safe in the panic room.”

“Tell them to stay there,” Eli ordered.

Matt typed out the message, his thumbs flying over the screen. Then he handed Eli an earpiece. “Put this on. We need to be able to communicate.”

Tank took the other one and slipped it over his ear. “I’ll go around back. All you have to do is get him near the back door. Since he already broke that glass, I should have a clear shot.”

“And I’ll take the front,” Matt added. “We’ve got this covered. Let’s nail this bastard.”

Tank loaded his rifle ammunition into a bag and hopped out of the van. He looked both ways and disappeared around the side of the house into the trees. There were plenty of places he could take cover back there.

He pulled out his phone and sent Agent Harris’s number to Matt. “Call this number and tell them what’s going on. I don’t have time for questions right now, but we’ll need them as backup.”

Matt looked at the information that had just popped up on his phone’s screen. “The FBI?”

“Yeah. I’ve been consulting with them on a case. If this guy has been looking for me, then they’ll want to know about it.” He glanced at Sasha. “And what about her?”
 

“I’ll take care of her, don’t worry about it.”
 

Sasha shivered and pressed back against the wall. Eli nodded at her and then walked to the front of the house. The wind lashed his face, but he couldn’t feel the cold, just the tears it brought to his eyes. His focus was on one thing—getting inside the house. He couldn’t think about what he might find when he opened that door or whether Kay might be injured.
 

The front door was slightly open. He pushed it open the rest of the way and it gave a long, extended whine. He pulled his Glock as he stepped over the threshold. The front hallway was empty. He crossed to the entry of the kitchen and entered low. The floor was covered in glass, the shards glittering on the wood like diamonds. A brick lay in the middle of the destruction. He took a hesitant step forward, and glass crunched beneath his shoe.
 

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

He turned at the sound of the voice, his gun at the ready. The man standing in the doorway to the room wore black from head to toe. The hood of his jacket obscured his face.
 

“You were watching me the day I talked to Jeremy King.”

The hood nodded. “I’ve been watching you for a long time. You’re a hard man to catch up with.” He raised a hand and pushed the hood back. It fell away and his face came into view.

And Eli felt the years fall away.

MARA HAD NEVER considered herself to be that calm under pressure, but when Kaylee started praying, she found an inner well of strength she didn’t know she had. Her brother was out there, possibly in danger, and if there was anything she could do to help, she’d never forgive herself later if she didn’t do it.

“We are not just going to sit here and wait. There has to be something we can do.” Her eyes landed on the computer in the corner of the room. It looked like a general workstation but this wasn’t an office—it was a panic room. If it was there, there had to be a good reason.

“The computer. Eli wouldn’t have put that in here for no reason, right?” Mara didn’t know Elliott that well, but from her brother’s descriptions of him as a boss, he was exacting and thorough. Everyone respected him because he took his job seriously. So she had to assume that would carry through into every aspect of his life.
 

Kay’s head snapped up and her eyes followed Mara’s. “Eli doesn’t do anything for no reason. Maybe there’s some kind of program on there that will tell us what to do.” She smiled tremulously and, for the first time, looked hopeful.
 

Mara could only hope the computer would help them because otherwise she had no idea what to do.
 

She sat down in front of the desk. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” As soon as she shook the mouse, the monitor on the left flickered to life and she was presented with a screen filled with icons.

“Oh crap. Where do I start?” She decided to just click on the first thing that caught her eye. The program loaded and she was faced with something that looked like a legal contract.
 

“Okay, that’s not any good.”

“This is going to take forever,” Kay said. She was walking around the room, bouncing the baby in her arms. Her eyes reflected her worry.
 

Mara quickly clicked on another icon and then another. She figured process of elimination should eventually bring her to something useful.
 

“Wait! What’s that?” Kay moved closer to peer over Mara’s shoulder.

The second monitor displayed an image of a house. The color wasn’t very good, so Mara wasn’t sure if she was looking at an older home or just a faded picture.
 

“I’m not sure, but it looks familiar.” Mara hit another key and the image changed to a street with several cars parked alongside the road. There was a white van on one side of the street. She hit another key and got an image of an SUV.
 

Kay gasped. “That’s our car!”

Mara wasn’t sure how she could tell because the image was so dark and grainy. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. It even has the little triangular-shaped air freshener Eli hung over the rearview mirror.”

“This must be the security system. The car is in the garage, right?”

“Yeah. Maybe if we keep going, we’ll see the guys and whether they’re safe. For all we know, they might have already caught the guy and we can come out now.”

Mara tapped the Enter key a few more times, scrolling through images of the back of the house and several empty rooms. She had a feeling that this situation wasn’t going to be resolved so easily.