Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Oliver Jaxton pulled the car onto the bridge hours after night had fallen. He was alone in the car. Alone on the bridge…until he saw the other vehicle. People over by the railing. The bridge was the old trestle kind that rumbled under the tires.
For the last few hours, they’d gone over and over contingencies. He and Kenna and Zeyla—once they’d tracked her down and she’d shown up at the police station. The cops and their “team,” who would be working this.
Seemed more like hanging Jax out to dry, but he wasn’t going to argue.
At least he could control the outcomes when it was him on point.
To an extent, anyway. Operations like this never went the way they were planned.
So when they finally got the time and location for the exchange—the flash drive for Gabby Terrance—he’d had them give him the particulars of the location but advised them to stick to “if A, then B” scenarios.
He stopped about twenty feet from the SUV parked in the middle of the bridge facing him. Headlights blinding. Jax angled his car to the right so he could get a look at the people.
More than one man, dressed in dark clothing. Faces covered by masks.
Gabby was standing with bound hands and a gag over her mouth, far too close to the edge.
She looked like she was freezing in jeans and a short-sleeved T-shirt.
But the fear she felt right now was probably worse than the cold.
Jax didn’t know her, didn’t care about her the way he cared about his family, but she also should never have been caught up in this situation.
Her brother had done the right thing and been killed for it.
She had tried to find out the truth of what happened to him, and now she was a pawn in someone’s sick game to get something that didn’t belong to them. Or did. He wasn’t convinced the company was innocent, despite their protests.
Whoever this was, if they weren’t part of the company, then they were a competitor, and the lawyers sent by the company’s board knew who they might be. Right?
Either way, it was Jax putting his butt on the line.
And honestly, it felt more normal than a lot of what had been happening in his life lately.
He made sure the weapon he had stashed in the back of his belt wouldn’t be visible and climbed out. Even if they spotted that one and had him throw away his weapon, he wouldn’t be without protection. Thanks to Kenna’s tactic of stashing weapons in all kinds of places.
He held his hands up. No one behind him on the bridge. Just his car, with the engine clicking as it cooled.
He hadn’t worn a jacket, hoping the Henley he’d pushed up to his elbows made him look casual and nonthreatening to these guys. He walked forward in the glaring beam of the SUV headlights.
The man beside Gabby held her arm while she whimpered and cried.
Behind him, Jax could see another guy. There to cover his buddy. Probably more men were around, out of sight in the dark. But he could only see these two.
“Let her go,” Jax called out, “and I’ll give you what you want.”
He stopped about ten feet away.
Neither man spoke.
Jax pointed at the railing beside Gabby. “Bring her back from that edge!”
Another man emerged from behind the SUV, over to Jax’s left.
He had zero control in this situation. If he said the code phrase and the cavalry sped onto the bridge, Gabby would be dead, and most likely so would Jax. They’d kill him, take what they were here for, and then shoot their way out of the situation.
The man holding onto Gabby yelled, “Show us the flash drive!”
Jax lowered his left hand slowly, stuck two fingers in his left front pocket and raised it to show them the drive and the port that it went into, both in a plastic baggie. He had a vest on, sure, but didn’t like feeling this vulnerable one bit.
If he had to guess, these were the same guys from the day before. They’d escaped into the car wash and evaded these men.
Guys who knew they’d been in the house. Probably watched them through a link to the internal cameras. Realized they had discovered the drive everyone was looking for. Came after them. Jax’s family. His pregnant wife. His young adult daughter. His wife’s cousin—sister—whatever.
No. Didn’t matter what kind of guys these were. This would be over tonight.
Jax held the bag out. “The drive for her.” He motioned with his chin like he hadn’t even bothered to learn Gabby’s name. “Everyone walks away.”
“Okay, FBI,” the guy holding Gabby said. “Hand it over.”
The guy to the left started toward Jax. He came close enough to grab the bag out of Jax’s hand. Jax took half a step back. “Let her go at the same time.”
Despite the cool night temperature, sweat ran down his back.
The thug to his left produced a gun and pointed it at Jax’s head. He lunged forward and grabbed the drive, then backed up.
At the same time, the guy holding Gabby shoved her.
Over the edge.
Gabby screamed. Jax ran to the spot where she’d been standing. Gunfire broke out from the rear of the SUV—the man who’d been covering his friends.
Splash.
Jax stumbled on instinct but kept himself from falling. He ended up in a crouch beside the railing.
For a split second, he waited for Gabby to surface and scream. But he didn’t hear the sound in time. With his gun drawn and aimed at the men, he squeezed off three shots as the men jumped into their vehicle.
One fired back wildly.
Jax crouched in the dark, praying God would hide him in the shadows.
He fired back, shooting at the tires. FBI policy didn’t allow for shots to be fired at a fleeing vehicle, as there was often a high chance that a bystander could be hit. But he wasn’t FBI anymore, and there were no innocents on this bridge.
The SUV reversed at high speed. Jax left the police to pursue the men and rose, grabbing the railing and looking over.
A boat motored into view, coming out from cover under the bridge. Someone switched on a light, shining the beam on the water. Jax spotted the figure in the murky depths and didn’t want to know how cold that water would be.
When he was certain they were good to pull Gabby out of the water, he turned and ran back to his car. Jax waited while a stream of police cars with red-and-blue flashing lights sped over the bridge in pursuit of the SUV, and then he flipped around to head to the rendezvous point.
He grabbed his phone, found the walkie-talkie app, and hit the button. “I’m clear. Headed to the pier.”
Zeyla responded a few seconds later. “We have Gabby on board. See you there.”
Jax cut off the road, bumped across some grass, and drove onto the asphalt of a single-lane road that ran along the riverside. After a mile or so, the trees gave way to a wooden pier. He left his car on the street and jogged down the wooden boards to where the boat stopped.
Zeyla jumped off the deck onto the pier and caught the rope the boat’s owner tossed to her. She tied it off like an expert.
Jax threw out, “Where’d you learn how to do that?” while passing by her and stepping onto the boat just as the pilot cut the engine.
Gabby lay at the front of the boat.
Jax crouched by her. “Ms. Terrance.” He patted her cheek.
The pilot eased down to sit on a bench seat in the nose of the boat. “How is she?”
“Apart from soaking wet? She was standing on the bridge, and I didn’t see any visible wounds, but who knows what they did to her.”
Zeyla crouched by him. “Blanket.” She laid it over Gabby.
“We need to get her to the hospital.” He put one knee down and slid his arms under the unconscious woman. “It’s probably faster to drive than to call an ambulance.”
He’d suggested they have one on standby for the operation, but the chief had shaken his head. Apparently, the crew in this county were voluntary, and it took at least forty minutes to get them to a scene. Why that meant not having them on standby, the chief didn’t answer.
But he’d given Jax the address for the closest hospital—which turned out to be more of a medical center. They didn’t even have an emergency entrance. Just twenty-four-hour staff and a buzzer at the door to be let in.
Zeyla ran ahead of him. “This woman needs help!”
Jax carried Gabby inside, and when the nurse waved him over, he followed her. She frowned at them, holding a set of doors open. “What happened?”
“She fell off the bridge on Rowland Road. But that was after she was kidnapped and held at gunpoint.” He laid her on the bed in the empty room, and the nurse grabbed a phone off the wall.
“Doctor Walsh to room four.” The nurse’s voice came through an intercom system, ringing down the hallway. “We’ll take care of her. You need to fill out paperwork, and I’ll be out in a moment to give it to you. Don’t leave.”
Jax nodded. “Got it. Just help her.”
The nurse shifted the blanket open so she could assess Gabby. Far too pale, the woman hadn’t woken up yet. Jax realized he didn’t know if she had family other than Shawn, who’d been murdered. Did she have next of kin, or loved ones? Friends she considered as good as family.
He needed to find out.
The doctor rushed into the room, lifting a stethoscope from around his neck. Older man, graying hair. He’d probably served the people of this county for decades. Presiding over births, deaths, ailments, and emergencies.
“What on earth?”
The nurse shifted back the hem of Gabby’s shirt, revealing a ragged wound that had been stitched.
“What is that?” It looked like she’d been seriously injured—or someone had hacked into her.
The nurse yelled at him, “Go wait in the waiting room!”
Before she’d even finished, the doctor started giving orders.
Jax left them to it and headed back to the waiting area.
He could write down some basic information on a paper and leave it, but they weren’t hanging around for hours.
Gabby was in good hands. They’d be able to contact her next of kin and probably the police, as soon as she woke up enough to speak to the staff here.
Zeyla hung back in the waiting area, texting on her phone. As he approached, she looked up. “Did she wake up?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. They found a nasty wound on her abdomen that was stitched up.” He winced. “I almost don’t want to ask what they did to her.”
Zeyla lowered the phone to her side, staring at him. “How wide was it?”
Was he supposed to know that? “I don’t know. Like all the way across her belly. You think they took out organs or a baby or something? She wasn’t pregnant when we talked to her.”
His greatest fear was surfacing again. He wanted to pray the fear away and get to the place he could trust God in the moment, but Zeyla brushed past him.
“She wasn’t pregnant.” Zeyla headed across the lobby. “And they didn’t take something out. They put something in.” She started running toward the double doors.
A ricocheting boom thundered through the medical center, followed by a fireball from an explosion. It hit the double doors and flung them out.
Zeyla stumbled, half diving and half falling into a slide across the floor. The fireball blew over her head while she curled up. Arms over her face.
Jax felt the rush of heat and concussive force slam into him, shoving him back toward the front of the building.
His head hit something, and everything went black.