Bang: B-Squad Book Two (12 page)

B
lood rushed
through her ears so fast that she could barely hear Essie's voice on the other end of the line of the burner phone. She'd given the number to Essie to call in case of emergency.

"Did you hear me, Aunt T? I think daddy found me."

Panicking—though tempting beyond words—wouldn't help. So Tamara sucked in a hard breath through her nostrils and let it out in one long exhale through her mouth. The roar in her ears quieted.
Better. Much better.
She could feel Isaac hovering above her, but every ounce of her attention needed to be focused on her niece.

"I heard you, Essie." Damn, she sounded totally calm and together for a woman sitting on her ass in the hallway on the verge of an anxiety attack. "Tell me everything."

"I was walking home from the library today and was a few blocks away from the house when I noticed a blue sedan going kinda slow. I figured it was probably a total creeper, so I stopped at one of the boutiques on Clifton Street and watched through the store window. One of the men in the car looked like a guy that used to hang around daddy."

This should not be happening. How in the hell had Jarrod managed to track Essie down? Tamara thought she'd been so careful. Then again, he'd lucked into finding her too. If he managed to get his hands on Essie, the bastard would use both instances as proof to his followers that God was on his side—if the man really was part of Jarrod's cult. It could be mistaken identity or a coincidence, but Tamara's twisted up gut didn't think so.

"The man in the car, was he part of the Crest Society?" she asked.

"No, but he did work for daddy. The kind of work that usually meant someone was in trouble."

"Are you sure it was him?"

"No, but I'm scared." There was more than just fear in Essie's voice. A fine thread of hysteria ran through each word.

Tamara eased herself back into a standing position, her back to the wall and Isaac in front of her, no doubt filling in the blanks of Essie's side of the conversation. "Where are you now?"

"After the sedan went by, I went into the store and out the back way. I ran through the alleys back to Albert's house. I didn't see the car again."

Good news—probably as good as they were going to get today. "Stay put. I'll be there as soon as I can. We're going to bring you to Fort Worth."

"But I thought hiding separately was the safest plan."

Tamara glanced up at Isaac. She really hated it when someone else was right, but she couldn't deny it in this case. "It was until your dad found me."

"Shit."

"Don't curse." It came out automatically, almost in her sister Amelia's voice.

"
That's
what you're worried about right now?" Essie's voice cracked over a stressed laugh.

"No. You know it's not." But the control freak in her demanded something not be out of whack, and if that meant enforcing her sister's rules on proper language then so be it. "I love you Essie."

"You too, Aunt T."

"Tell Albert to be on the lookout for us. You two stay safe and stay inside. Don't open up the doors for anyone. I'll be there tonight."

They said their goodbyes and Tamara hung up. She gathered up the guts of her purse that had spilled all over the floor until she could get her heart under control. Now that she was off the phone with Essie and free to freak out, her body was good and drunk on the speeding-pulse-shot-of-adrenaline cocktail.

"That didn't sound good," Isaac said, bending down to help her clean up.

"It's not. Essie thinks she spotted one of Jarrod's men."

Something dark and dangerous passed over his face, deepening the fine lines and hardening his jaw. "How soon can you leave?"

She dropped her favorite tube of Maraschino Red lipstick into her purse and stood up, nerves as steely as they were going to get until she had Essie safe. "Right now. My go-bag with the money in it is in my office."

"I'll tell the team the schedule just got moved up. We can't wait for the jet to get here. Meet me in the garage. We leave in five." He cupped her chin and tilted her face up. "Don't worry. We'll get Essie."

God she hoped he was right. "Tell the team to hurry and to pack for bear."

He grinned and brushed a quick kiss across her lips. "That's my girl."

She wasn't, but as she watched him sprint back into the briefing room part of her wished she could be.

Twelve hours of driving time separated the Devil’s Dip Gym and Hamilton, Colorado. Isaac was betting they could do it in ten. That meant instead of being comfortable in his truck, he was cramped inside a midnight blue Camaro with Fort Worth in the rearview and Amarillo out in the distance. Tamara sat in the passenger seat, her back ramrod straight and her hands clasped tight enough in her lap to make every knuckle in her fingers turn white. She'd been like that since they'd pulled out of the Devil's Dip Gym, and it was starting to make him twitchy.

"It's gonna be a long drive," he said, zipping around a family minivan with more dents than a back country road. "You might want to give your fingers a break."

She slowly turned her head to face him, her face set in a do-not-fuck-with-me expression. "Are you telling me to relax?"

"I guess so," he said, keeping his voice neutral enough to really tick her off.

"That's about the most ineffective way of getting me to do that."

"I don't know." He shrugged, loving the incensed spark in her blue eyes. "You're thinking about something other than what will happen if we don't get to Essie in time."

"That's your genius plan?" Her eyes narrowed until they were little more than slits. "Piss me off enough that I stop thinking about everything that could go wrong?"

"Pretty much."

She turned away from him with a huff, but her hands lay flat and relaxed in her lap. "Your plan sucks."

Texas passed in a brown and blue flash as the miles flew by. Country music filled the car with stories of good times, bad love, and everything in between. By the time they were headed toward New Mexico, the tension had mellowed into a comfortable silence, punctuated by music that grew ever scratchier as the highway went on. Time to use the mood to his advantage and do a little digging for information.

"Tell me about Essie."

Tamara kept her gaze on the scenery, resting her head against the seat. "She's smart. Everyone in the Crest Society homeschools their kids, but Amelia always found a way to teach Essie a little bit more than was expected. Most of the girls on the compound never get past middle school. Essie got her high school equivalency degree right before Amelia died."

Pride rang in her voice. She sounded like his mom whenever she started bragging about her kids, no matter how much it would embarrass him or his sisters.

"So what do you do with a super-smart sixteen year old when you're on the run?"

Smart kids sometimes meant more trouble than the dumb ones. They always figured out new ways to entertain themselves.

"Part of the reason I went to Albert for help is because Hamilton has a small liberal arts college that would be perfect for Essie to attend." She let out a bittersweet sigh. "I thought maybe next year, if we hadn't heard from her father, she could enroll."

It was a sweet—if totally naive—hope. "So much for that."

She snorted. "Exactly."

After that it was a fast-food drive thru, a fresh tank of gas just south of the Colorado state line, and small talk about music and movies. It was a straight shot north from the state line to Hamilton. The GPS predicted five and a half hours. At their current pace, they'd be there in four and a half. He lowered the sun visor and pushed it against the driver's side window so it helped block the setting sun coming in from the west.

"So what's the deal with this Albert guy?" he asked, holding the steering wheel a little tighter than necessary. "Is he an old boyfriend?"

"You mean you don't already know everything about him?" She said it jokingly, but the question had a punch to it. There was no way she was happy baring her secrets.

"Since I just found out about his existence today, no. I'm good, darlin' but I'm not that good. You managed to do a damn fine job of hiding Essie if I couldn't find her location until you gave it up."

"Fat lot of good it did. How in the hell did Jarrod manage to find her?"

"If he did." He had to say it even though that sixth sense that warned of something bad just around the corner was going nuts.

She brought her knees up to her chest and curled her arms around her legs, making herself a small, tight ball on the passenger seat. "My gut says the clock is ticking."

He got that, and he knew just how frustrating it was to know part of the equation but not the rest. Good thing they had nothing but time right now to unravel the mystery.

"Then let's figure it out." He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel in time with the slow song playing on the radio. "If Fane sent out Wolczyk to sniff around your ex-husband who you hadn't seen for years, then he's leaving no stone unturned. Who is Albert to you? An old lover?"

That made her laugh. "Not a boyfriend that's for sure. Albert Glad-Lovatt is the secret weapon of every beauty queen who has ever won one of the major tiaras in the past thirty years. And I don't play for his team."

"He runs beauty pageants?"

"No." She shook her head. "He runs the girls."

He whipped his head around and gaped at her. Now that was not the answer he'd been expecting.

"Not like that," Tamara said, her eyes wide. "He's not a pimp. He's a pageant consultant— the best one there is. Even after I stopped doing pageants, we kept in touch. He's the closest thing I had to a mentor. When things got bad with my mom, I could always count on Albert."

Okay, that made sense. Perhaps what had kept Tamara safe all this time was the fact that she wasn't close to many people. As far as he could tell she’d only had Amelia, Albert, and Essie before landed with the B-Squad.

"Who knew you two were close?" he asked. Someone had to. If it had been an easy connection to make, he would have made it. That Fane may have gotten the drop on Isaac gnawed on him.

"My mom, who I haven't spoken with in years. A few of the girls from the pageants, most of whom I'm not in touch with. The others, it's only enough to make small talk at parties where we cross paths. No one else. Not even Taz."

"Albert didn't come to the wedding?"

"Taz and I eloped. It seemed very romantic at the time."

"And now?" He didn't mean to hold his breath, he just couldn't help it. What she said next mattered.

Tamara sighed and laid her cheek on top of her kneecap. "It seems like I was running away as fast as I could."

The air whooshed out of him and his shoulders eased down. "We're all guilty of that sometimes."

"Oh yeah? What are you running from?" she asked. "What was that whole pissing contest about following orders during the meeting?"

He should have known she wouldn't let it go. She wasn't the type. Her bulldog attitude was one of the things he liked about her best, but that didn't mean he wanted his past to be the bone she wouldn't let go of. Silence thickened the atmosphere inside the Camaro as the sun-parched scenery of southeast Colorado flew past. He opened his mouth to tell her in no uncertain terms to mind her own business, but that's not what came out.

"I met Lash in the Marine Corps. We were in the same unit until he rotated back to the states and got out. His replacement was…different."

"What do you mean?"

How to describe Mitchum. Corn-fed? In over his head? Too green to know better than to believe the bullshit?

"The kids was young and on his third deployment."

Tamara let out a low whistle and unfolded her legs, pivoting in her seat so she faced him. "Damn, that's a lot."

He nodded. "Especially for someone who may not have been all that mentally healthy to begin with."

The signs had been there, but no one wanted to see them. Even when Isaac had pointed them out to his superiors, their eyes wouldn't see the cracks that had been growing every day.

"The kid couldn't hack it. He needed to rotate back stateside. I made the recommendation. My commander disagreed. The kid stayed in." Isaac clenched his jaw and watched the semi-trucks up ahead jockey for position on the interstate. "One day, we were out as part of the whole hearts and minds effort at a local village. The kid snapped, grabbed a four-year-old girl, and put a gun to her head. We tried to talk him down. The girl was crying. Her mother was screaming. Her father was begging us to do something—anything. My commander was ordering everyone not to fire. The kid locked eyes with me and I knew. That was it for him. He was done. He wasn't ever going to see home again and he didn't want to. He thought that was his best way out. If he had to take that little girl with him to make it happen, so be it. I couldn't let that happen. I fired. Took him out."

Where there should have been chaos there was only shock followed by a world of shit raining down on him.

"Did they court martial you?"

"There was a reporter embedded with us that day." Who'd have ever thought the skinny little puke would have been his saving grace? "He saw the whole thing. They couldn't court martial me without making a shitty situation even worse in the national media. Still, they wanted me out for not following orders, and I went."

"Isaac, I'm sorry," her voice was thick with sincerity.

One glance over and he could confirm it, but he couldn't risk it. He was in too deep with her already.

"I'm not."

He'd come home and hadn't known what to do with his life until Lash brought up the idea of freelance investigation. Since Isaac had absolutely no interest in ever working in a team environment with some asshole giving orders again, it had been the perfect solution, —although it didn't explain why he spent so much time working overflow cases for the B-Squad. Unwilling to go down that path, he turned up the radio and let the country singer belt it out.

The air was thinner in Hamilton. Isaac parked the car across the street from Albert's two-story grey and white Victorian house with the wrought iron fence surrounding the front yard. It had been dark for several hours by the time they got to the small town in the Rocky Mountain foothills. Tamara hadn't wanted to risk calling the house, so she'd spent the last several, very quiet hours in the car doing breathing exercises and telling herself everything was going to be all right.