Wanted (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 8)
Read Wanted (Hostage Rescue Team Series Book 8) Online
Authors: Kaylea Cross
Wanted
by
Kaylea Cross
Copyright © 2016 by Kaylea Cross
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Cover Art by
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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the author.
ISBN: 978-1-928044-13-0
Dedication
To all the Bauer and Zoe fans out there! This one’s for you. Because we could all use more Bauer in our lives, am I right?
Kaylea
Dear readers,
I love my cast of characters in the
HRT
series, but many of you know that Bauer and Zoe are my very favorites (shhh, don’t tell the others, I wouldn’t want to hurt their feelings!).
I’ve been wanting to write about these two again, and finally got the chance in
Wanted
. Hope you enjoy the surprises I have in store for you!
Happy reading!
Kaylea Cross
Zoe Renard was the key.
Amanda turned on her laptop and set her fingers on the keyboard, a sharp sense of anticipation humming inside her. Her expertise with IT meant she had a certain skillset that was highly sought after. Now she was finally using that proficiency to get what she wanted.
What she
deserved
. And by the time anyone managed to trace her accounts and figure out who she was, she’d have disappeared.
While Zoe hadn’t been her original target, she was a means to an end. A convenient one. And even though Amanda had suppressed that instinct for a long time, she didn’t have to anymore. Because now she finally had the motivation and the means to act on what her gut had been telling her all along.
Zoe had to die.
Her heart beat faster as she typed out her latest message, this one the most blatant of all. Screw being subtle. She wanted Zoe to be scared when she read this one, wanted her to feel like something was coming.
Because it was. And sooner than she realized.
A fierce sense of satisfaction curled inside her as her fingers tapped the keys. Her entire plan for the cushy future she’d mapped out for herself had come raining down around her in fiery ruins because of Zoe. Now she was going to make that nosy Goth bitch pay.
Except finding her was proving a challenge, even for Amanda.
Since shacking up with her FBI agent lover after what she’d gone through last year, Zoe kept a low profile these days. Amanda had been unable to find an address for her so far, and even after tracking credit card purchases and the like, she’d been forced to resort to stalking her pen name through various social media sites online.
Fucking weird, the way she liked to dress up like something out of a Tim Burton movie. The woman owned a whole wardrobe of creepy Victorian outfits, had ridiculous, freaky-colored hair and heavy black eye makeup. And her writing was even more bizarre than her physical appearance.
For some reason Amanda would never understand, a surprising number of people seemed to love Zoe’s books, and how she made her characters suffer in the pages of her romantic horror novels. The woman had a dark and twisted imagination to match that carefully cultivated queen-of-darkness image, especially when it came to torturing the people she wrote about.
Amanda wished she could do the same to her. Show her how it was done in real life.
The thought triggered a flash of inspiration in her brain.
“That’s perfect,” she whispered under her breath, goose bumps rising on her arms as she deleted what had been there and wrote the new words. The new message fit the escalation of the previous e-mails nicely too. Made it seem like Zoe’s stalker was becoming increasingly unhinged.
I knew as soon as I read your first book that you were like me. You love to inflict pain, take pleasure in it. A fellow sadist. Wouldn’t you like to know how it feels to suffer the way your characters do? I think I’m going to enjoy doing it to you. Carve you up just like your character Drake did to his victims…
She let the threat trail off there, knowing it would be more intense that way. After studying the message for a few moments longer, she decided it had just the right tone she wanted and hit Send.
“And now we wait,” she murmured to herself, pulling her cat into her lap to stroke its silky fur. His rumbling purr was soothing in the quiet, cozy apartment she’d been renting for the past few weeks. The longest she’d stayed in one place since leaving her job and starting down the path to freedom.
In just a few short days it would all be over, this year-long path she’d been traveling. Zoe would report the threat immediately to the cops and the FBI. That should trigger enough activity through the various sites and accounts Amanda was monitoring for her to get enough intel to figure out where Zoe was.
“Has to be close to Quantico,” she said to her cat, who closed his eyes and swished his tail in response. That’s where the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team was based. And Amanda wanted the offered reward money badly enough that she’d even contemplated going on base to do her recon.
But there was a difference between being desperate and just being plain stupid. So she’d chosen the safer option of going after Zoe instead.
Amanda wanted that money. She
needed
the money, and the sense of satisfaction she would get from having a part in this operation.
Not long now
…
Zoe was the reason Carlos had died. The reason she was now forced to take these drastic and risky measures. It would be worth it in the end though.
Soon Amanda would have both her revenge and the money she needed to start a new life in the tropical paradise she’d been dreaming of, escape there once she got the reward money.
She turned off the laptop, a sly smile curving her mouth. It felt good to finally be back in control after months of uncertainty and looking over her shoulder every moment. Everything was ready now. Her only regret was that she wouldn’t be able to savor Zoe’s fearful expression when she realized she had another potentially deadly problem on her hands.
Once they got Zoe, her lover would come for her. Then they’d both die.
****
FBI Special Agent Clay Bauer snapped out of a light doze when the captain announced they’d be landing soon. Considering everything his team had just gone through, the long-ass flight from Anchorage back to northern Virginia had given them some welcome time to decompress.
Now all he could think about was Zoe, and how close he was to seeing her again. He’d missed his Goth goddess like crazy these past few weeks. There was no one else like his raven; she was a unique and complicated mix of brilliant and driven, imaginative and dark. She could be sharp-tongued at times, she was independent and fiercely loyal. Lucky for him, she was also incredibly loving.
He flat-out worshipped her, thanked his lucky stars every day that she’d somehow seen past his grim exterior and decided she wanted him anyway.
Next to him his commander, Supervisory Special Agent Matt DeLuca let out a yawn and stretched his arms over his head with a grunt.
“Looking forward to being in my own bed tonight. Been a long couple of days.”
Clay grunted. “Tell me about it.” Though DeLuca was most likely looking forward to crawling into bed next to his girlfriend, Briar, just as Clay couldn’t wait to do the same with Zoe. It’d been almost three weeks since he’d last been home, and after this latest op he and the others were exhausted. All of them were anxious to get back to Quantico, but he suspected mostly because their women were there waiting for them.
“That was definitely one for the books, huh?” DeLuca muttered.
“Yeah.”
He knew Zoe had been worried about him, with all the media coverage about their recent op. Two nights ago they’d taken a cruise ship under the control of a deadly terrorist cell. It had been one scary-ass op, and they’d been lucky not to lose anyone when so many passengers and crew had been killed. The carnage had been staggering.
“Out of all of us, I think Cruzie and Vance are gonna need the downtime the most this week,” DeLuca continued.
Clay grunted again and glanced over his left shoulder to look for them. They were sitting together a couple rows back, their shoulders touching as they dozed in their seats, Vance’s right arm bandaged tight across his chest. The former SF soldier had wrecked his shoulder while being hoisted into the helo off the ship’s deck, and they didn’t know when he’d be operational again.
He turned back to DeLuca, who was adjusting his San Diego Chargers cap on his head. “We got anything scheduled once we get back to HQ, or…?” He was really hoping his commander would say no.
“Other than doing inventory and getting everything squared away, no. Not now that the cell responsible for the attack has been dismantled.”
Thank God. He didn’t think he could take another meeting right now, not when he was so close to seeing Zoe again. Things between them were great—better than great—except he couldn’t shake the gut feeling that something had been bothering her the past couple months.
She hadn’t said anything, which in and of itself made him concerned. Zoe wasn’t exactly known for holding back when she had something on her mind. But his gut told him she was doing just that and he didn’t know why.
The plane circled twice then began its final approach. When it parked at the gate all of them stood up to stretch their legs and grab their gear. Clay hefted his ruck and waited in line in the aisle behind DeLuca to offload, aware of a dull ache in his lower back. The surgery he’d undergone to repair a ruptured disk had helped reduce his pain significantly, but it would never go away completely and sitting his ass on a plane for that long didn’t help.
From the airfield they drove back to base at Quantico and filed into headquarters to unload their equipment, then showered and changed. By the time Clay grabbed his keys from his locker and called Zoe to tell her he’d be there soon, anticipation tingled in his veins. He was anxious to hear that sweet and slightly husky Louisiana-accented voice.
She didn’t answer though. It was dinnertime, so maybe she was cooking or out grabbing something. He slid his phone into his pocket and headed for the door, anxious to get home to surprise her.
On top of some asshole bothering her online she’d been sick with a bad cold all week and he felt badly that he hadn’t been home even one night to help take care of her. He had a feeling his relentless schedule was maybe part of the reason she’d seemed a little less happy lately.
His job demanded a lot of sacrifices from both of them, and though Zoe was fully supportive of his career, he could understand why even someone as strong as her might be feeling neglected right now. Clay intended to spend lots of quality time with her over the next few days to try and make up for his absence.
But at the door leading out to the parking lot, a voice from behind stopped him.
“Can I talk to you for a sec?” a familiar Alabama drawl asked.
Clay turned to face his team leader and best friend, who also happened to be Zoe’s cousin. That’s how they’d met in the first place. Tuck tipped his dark blond head toward an office just down the hallway.
Disguising his irritation, Clay nodded, because Tuck wouldn’t ask to talk to him privately unless it was important. “Sure, yeah.” He followed him inside the empty room, wondering what was going on. Why the need for privacy?