Chapter 14
He lay in the darkness of his room for a long moment, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Elena.
They’d worked on the code until well past two in the morning, hunched over her laptop in the kitchen while his brothers took turns keeping watch.
Elena had analyzed the kill switch from every angle, muttering to herself as she traced the countermeasure’s logic through WATCHDOG’s architecture.
Reed had tried to help, but his expertise was in tactics and operations, not cybersecurity. After a few hours of feeling useless, he’d kissed her forehead and told her to get some rest when she was ready.
“Just a little longer,” she’d murmured, her eyes never leaving the screen. “I think I’m getting close to something.”
That had been three hours ago.
Reed pushed himself out of bed and pulled on a shirt, his bare feet silent on the cabin’s hardwood floor as he made his way toward Elena’s room.
She needed rest—real rest, not the fitful dozing she’d been doing between bursts of coding.
If she was still at that laptop, he would physically carry her to bed.
The thought made him smile. Elena had always been stubborn about her work, driven to the point of self-destruction when she was chasing a solution. Some things hadn’t changed in five years.
He stopped outside her door and knocked softly. “Elena?”
No response.
Reed frowned and knocked again, louder this time. “Elena, it’s me. You need to get some sleep.”
Silence.
A cold feeling began to creep up his spine—the same instinct that had saved his life countless times in combat.
Something was wrong.
“Elena?” He tried the door handle and found it unlocked. The door swung open to reveal an empty room.
The bed was made, the sheets undisturbed. Elena’s laptop sat closed on the small desk, but her bag was gone. Her jacket was gone.
She was gone.
“Elena!” Reed’s voice echoed through the cabin as he rushed into the hallway. “Elena!”
Doors opened. His brothers emerged, sleep-rumpled and confused.
“What’s going on?” Walker demanded, instantly alert despite having been asleep seconds ago.
“She’s not here.” Reed’s voice came out harsh, ragged. “Elena’s not in her room.”
“What do you mean she’s not here?” James stumbled out of his room, wincing as the movement pulled at his wounded shoulder. “Where would she go?”
“I don’t know.” Reed was already moving, checking every room, every closet, every possible hiding spot. “Elena! Answer me!”
But the cabin was empty. She was nowhere to be found.
Terrel appeared in the hallway, his expression grim. “The car’s still outside. If she left, she didn’t drive.”
“Then someone took her.” The words tasted like poison in Reed’s mouth. “Someone took her, and we didn’t hear a thing.”
“That’s not possible,” Walker said. “I was on watch until 0300. No vehicles approached, no perimeter breaches—”
“Then how is she gone?” Reed roared, his composure finally cracking.
His brothers exchanged glances but said nothing. There was nothing to say. Elena had vanished from a secured safe house without a trace, and none of them had any idea how.
Reed forced himself to breathe, to think, to push past the terror clawing at his chest. Panic wouldn’t help Elena. He needed to be tactical. Analytical. He needed to find her.
“Search the cabin,” he ordered. “Every inch. Look for any sign of what happened—forced entry, a struggle, anything.”
They spread out, moving through the small space with methodical precision. Reed headed for the kitchen, the last place he’d seen Elena alive and safe and here.
The kitchen looked exactly as they’d left it—coffee mugs in the sink, laptop chargers coiled on the counter, the first aid supplies from treating James’s wound still scattered across the table.
And there, in the center of the table, was a piece of paper that hadn’t been there before.
Reed’s blood turned to ice.
He crossed the room in three strides and snatched up the note, his hands trembling as he read the words scrawled across the page in bold, aggressive handwriting.
I have her. Leave this alone or all of you will die.
No signature. No demands. Just a threat and a promise.
“Reed?” Walker appeared in the doorway. “What is it?”
Reed couldn’t speak. He held out the note, watching his brother’s face as he read it.
Walker’s expression went from confusion to shock to cold, deadly fury in the span of three seconds. “Webb.”
“Has to be.” Reed’s voice was flat, emotionless—the voice he used in combat when feelings would get people killed. “He must have tracked us to the safe house. Waited until our guard was down.”
James and Terrel joined them in the kitchen, and Walker passed the note around. Each brother’s face hardened at Webb’s scribbled words.
“How did he get past our security?” Terrel asked. “I had sensors on every approach. Motion detectors, infrared cameras—nothing was triggered.”
“Webb has access to the most advanced surveillance technology on the planet,” Reed said grimly. “If anyone could bypass our defenses, it’s him.”
“So what do we do?” James asked. His wounded shoulder was clearly bothering him, but there was steel in his eyes. “We can’t just leave her with that psychopath.”
“We’re not leaving her anywhere.” Reed’s jaw tightened. “We’re going to find her, and we’re going to bring her home.”
“And Webb?” Walker’s voice was dangerously quiet.
Reed met his brother’s gaze, and something passed between them—an understanding forged in years of combat and brotherhood.
“Webb is going to die.”
The words hung in the air, heavy with promise. None of his brothers argued. None of them flinched.
“We need a lead,” Terrel said, already moving toward his laptop. “Something to tell us where he took her.”
“Can you trace anything from their systems?” Reed asked. “Any communication, any movement?”
“I can try.” Terrel’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “If Webb’s people accessed our network to locate the safe house, they might have left a digital footprint.”
Reed paced the kitchen like a caged animal, his mind racing through scenarios.
Webb had Elena. Webb, who had already tried to kill her once.
Webb, who had sold her technology to enemies of the state.
Webb, who had written leave this alone or all of you will die like it was a casual suggestion rather than a death threat.
If he hurt her—if he so much as touched her—Reed would tear him apart with his bare hands.
“Got something,” Terrel announced. “There’s a trace in our system—someone accessed our security feeds remotely about four hours ago. The connection originated from a server farm in Vancouver, but I can see where the data was routed after that.”
“Where?”
Terrel looked up, his expression grim. “Private airfield, forty miles north of here. Registered to a shell company that traces back to Webb’s network.”
“That’s where he took her,” Reed said. “That’s where we’re going.”
“Reed.” Walker’s hand landed on his shoulder, firm and grounding. “We need to do this smart. Webb will be expecting us. If we go in guns blazing—”
“Then we go in smart and armed.” Reed shrugged off his brother’s hand and headed for the room where they’d stored their gear. “I’m not leaving her with him a second longer than necessary.”
His brothers followed, and for the next ten minutes, the cabin was filled with the sounds of preparation—weapons being checked and loaded, tactical vests being strapped on, communications equipment being tested.
Reed moved on autopilot, his hands assembling his loadout while his mind stayed fixed on Elena.
She’d been afraid of exactly this—of putting him and his brothers in danger, of being used as leverage against them.
She’d tried to leave once before, convinced that disappearing was the only way to keep them safe.
Now Webb had taken that choice away from her. Had taken her away.
I love you, she’d said last night, her eyes shining with tears and hope. I never stopped.
Reed chambered a round and holstered his sidearm.
He wouldn’t lose her. Not again. Not ever.
“Everyone ready?” he asked, turning to face his brothers.
Walker stood by the door, a rifle slung across his back and a pistol at his hip. His expression was carved from stone. “Why did Reed leave us alive?”
James was checking his own weapon one-handed, his injured shoulder limiting his mobility but not his determination. “Agreed. Why?”
Terrel closed his laptop and grabbed his gear. “It doesn’t make sense?”
Reed nodded, then looked at each of his brothers in turn. “I don’t know. He could have a master plan, he could have been sloppy because he didn’t realize Elena was alive.”
For a few moments all of them were silent.
Reed scoffed. “I won’t ask you guys to put your lives in danger, but I’m getting her back.”
Walker glared at him.
James snorted.
Terrel cocked an eyebrow.
“You don’t have to ask,” Walker said.
The others nodded.
These men had followed him into war zones, had trusted him with their lives more times than he could count. And now they were following him again—into a fight that wasn’t theirs, against an enemy who had already proven he was willing to kill.
“Thank you,” Reed said quietly. “All of you.”
Walker’s expression softened slightly. “She’s family now, Reed. We don’t leave family behind.”
The words hit Reed like a physical blow, loosening something that had been wound tight in his chest since he’d found Elena’s room empty.
Family. Yes. That was exactly what she was.
“Let’s move,” Reed said. “We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
They filed out of the cabin into the gray pre-dawn light, breath misting in the cool air as they loaded into the SUV. Reed took the driver’s seat, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he pulled onto the road and accelerated toward the highway.
Behind him, his brothers were silent, each lost in their own thoughts. But Reed could feel their resolve, their anger, their readiness to do whatever was necessary to bring Elena home.
Webb thought he’d won. Thought that taking Elena would make them back off, would scare them into submission.
He was about to learn how wrong he was.
Reed pressed the accelerator harder, watching the speedometer climb as the safe house disappeared in his rearview mirror. He picked up his phone, ready to pull in every favor owed to him from his contacts at the government.
Hold on, Elena. I’m coming.
And this time, nothing would stop him.