Chapter 21
He'd been on the run as soon as he’d heard from Sophia, shouting at Drake to take over, and find a way to get Black Dawn in place, so he and their men could come home.
He spent hours in the air running it back in his mind.
The intelligence that had come in clean and fast. The deployment that had pulled his team instead of Black Dawn with no explanation.
The extraction that had gone textbook. Flawless.
Beyond textbook. Guard rotations confirmed in twenty-four hours.
Entry points exact. Nothing snagged. Not once.
Not fucking once.
He called Drake.
They discussed the operation in-depth. Mason told him that bone-deep, he knew it was a set-up.
Drake agreed. He got ahold of his wife Karen, but she was in Tennessee, and she’d been kept in the dark.
Same with his sister Evie. Evie was fucking pissed.
He’d sat on her, and then called Sophia, who did her best to keep it together and get him info that he then passed onto Mason.
Drake explained the Bree situation. The operation.
“Fuck.”
“Exactly,” Drake agreed.
“But I’m the real target. They’re going to go after mine. Someone has a grudge against me,” Mason ground out.
“That’s my read.” Drake agreed.
“They set up this op we were on. Staged in West Africa with no actionable orders and a textbook extraction already complete.”
“Someone was feeding the suits back home.”
“Yeah. This is Boko Haram,” Mason muttered.
“Yeah. Someone wanted you gone, then they wanted the women distracted.”
“That’s the way I see it. How soon can you get to the States?”
“We should be there thirty-six hours after you.”
“That gives Clint time to go through old missions and find out just who in the Boko Haram has it out for us. Has it out for me. And then has the network to set this up.”
“He’s getting set up,” Drake assured him.
“Good.”
They discussed a few more logistics, then hung up.
Mason then looked out the window at the dark over the ocean and thought about the text message.
Tell your SEAL this is just the beginning.
He thought about the word beginning. What it meant.
What it implied about timing. About planning.
About a man who had decided that the most efficient way to come after Mason Gault's family was to first ensure that Mason Gault was thousands of miles away when it started.
The wheels touched down at North Island at 1312.
The rush of relief Mason felt was unlike anything he had ever felt before. The American tarmac, Coronado's salt air already working through the seals of the fuselage.
Home. He was home.
He hit the release on his seatbelt the first moment he could.
Mason's phone connected to the network.
He had four missed calls from Sophia.
All within the last forty minutes.
The calls were wrong. The number of them was wrong. The window was wrong. Sophia did not call four times in forty minutes unless—
His phone rang in his hand.
Sophia.
He answered before the first ring finished. “I'm on the ground. I'm here. Talk to me.”
Her voice came through, and something in it stopped his blood cold.
“Mason.” One word. The way she said his name when the world had tilted off its axis. “They took Kayla.”
The word landed and Mason stopped breathing for one full second.
Not long, a second. But this one seemed to last an eternity.
Then he was moving.
“Where are you.” Not a question. His voice was already operational, the way it got when emotion was something he couldn't afford yet.
“The corner of Harbor and—” He heard someone speak behind her and she corrected herself. “FBI field office downtown. Mason, there are—”
“I'll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“They're not going to just let you—”
“Fifteen minutes.” He was already at the door of the aircraft.
He moved fast through the terminal, through the checkpoint, through the side door where the cars were, where he got in his truck without slowing down and was out of North Island in less than four minutes. He drove with his hands on the wheel and his jaw locked and the clock in his head ticking.
They took Kayla.
He ran what he knew, which wasn't much. He'd been on a government aircraft for nine hours, the kind that had no wi-fi and no way to reach home or know what had been building on the other side of an ocean while he sat thousands of miles away doing nothing.
First ensure that Mason Gault was thousands of miles away when it started.
He hit the freeway.
His phone rang. Not Sophia's number.
Drake.
“She's at the FBI field office on Front Street,” Drake said the moment he answered. “Darius got it from Clint. You need to know—”
“I'm already on my way.”
“They're going to come at you hard, Mase. They've got three dead bodies in a warehouse in National City that they may or may not have put together with a kidnapped fourteen-year-old, and a SEAL's wife. They’re not going to let her walk out.”
“Yes they will.”
A short pause. “You're not going to be able to tell them anything.”
“I know.”
“Lydia's already on it. She's managing what they find.” Another pause. “The girls are okay, Mase. They're staying dark.”
“Good.” He merged onto the 5. “How soon can you get home?”
“We're working it. Thirty-six hours. Maybe less.”
It wasn't the thirty-six hours that mattered. It was the next fifteen minutes. After that, the next hour. He was home, his team was not, and his daughter was in the hands of the Boko Haram.
He knew better than to let his mind go to the next thought. He'd been trained too long for that. You deal with what's in front of you. One thing at a time, until the thing is handled. Then you move onto the next.
“Talk to me when you've got a departure window,” Mason said.
“Roger that.”
He ended the call.
The FBI field office downtown was a nondescript federal building that gave away nothing from the outside. He found parking a block away, not wasting time looking for something closer, and covered the distance at a pace that wasn't quite running. He hit the lobby at 1328.
He identified himself to the officer at the desk and stated that he needed to see his wife, Sophia Gault, who had been brought in. The man told him to have a seat.
He didn't sit.
Three minutes later, a woman came out through the secured door. She was mid-forties, medium height, with a dark, short, practical haircut. Her ID badge read Special Agent Renata Cruz and her eyes, when they landed on him, did the same immediate assessment his had done on her.
She was good. He could see her running him in real time.
“Lieutenant Gault.” She extended her hand.
He shook it. “Where's my wife?”
“She's safe. She's—”
“Where is she?”
Cruz looked at him with the steady patience of someone who was used to receiving pushback. “She's in a conference room. She's not under arrest. We're in the middle of a conversation that—”
“She's been in a conversation for how long?”
A beat. “About two hours.”
“And have you found my daughter in those two hours?”
Something shifted in Cruz's expression. Not softness. Something more careful than that. “We have every available—”
“No.” Mason said it quietly. “I know what every available looks like, and I know what it sounds like, and I need to see my wife. Right now.” The last words came out quiet. Lethal.
Cruz looked at him for a moment.
“Lieutenant.” She lowered her voice slightly. It was a deliberate shift, that said she was going to be straight with him. “I understand you just got off a transport. I understand your daughter is missing. I have a daughter.” Like that mattered. It didn’t.
“I need you to understand that I am not your enemy, and that the fastest path to us finding your daughter runs through your cooperation.”
He'd been doing this long enough to recognize a good agent. She was a good agent.
He also didn't have the time for it.
“Special Agent Cruz.” He matched her, kept his voice measured.
“I've been on a government aircraft for nine and a half hours.
I landed twenty-two minutes ago. I don't know what happened here.
I don't know what my wife found herself in the middle of, and I don't know what you've been asking her for two hours.
What I do know, is that my fourteen-year-old-daughter is not here and every minute I'm standing in this lobby is a minute I'm not doing the thing I'm actually qualified to do.” He paused.
“Which is find her.” This time his voice was louder.
Not yelling, informing. As he would inform his team during an op and he expected their undivided attention.
Cruz held his gaze. “She told us you didn't know,” Cruz said.
“She'd be right.”
“About any of it. The warehouse, the deceased individuals, any of it.”
He heard what she was actually asking. He'd answered it already and he wasn't going to decorate it.
“I've been in West Africa,” Mason said. “Out of contact. I landed twenty-five minutes ago, now. I’m done talking. Take me to my wife.”
Cruz studied him. He let her.
“She also says she's done talking,” Cruz said finally. “Has been for about forty minutes.”
“Then there's no reason to keep her.”
“There's a reason.” Cruz's voice didn't harden but it got precise. “Two dead individuals who might be related to this kidnapping.”
“Do you have any evidence? Any at all? Any that places my wife at that scene?”
She paused for a long time. “No.”
“Then we’re done here.”
“Do you have any idea what happened to your daughter?”
He looked her straight in the eye. “If I did, I wouldn’t be standing here in front of you. Now release my wife.”
Agent Cruz sighed, then nodded. “Come with me.”
She held the door and he walked through.
The conference room was the second door on the left. He saw her in the window and he pushed open the door.
Sophia was at the far end of the table, her hands folded on the table in front of her.
She was not looking at the agent seated across from her.
She was staring at a fixed point on the far wall with the particular quality of stillness she got when she was holding herself together through pure force of will.
She heard the door. When she looked up and saw him, something in her face broke open and then immediately closed again, the way it did when she couldn't let go yet, when she had to hold the line a little longer.
He crossed the room.
He pulled her up from the chair and into his arms before anyone could say a word, and he felt her hands grip the front of his shirt as her forehead pressed into his chest. He felt her take one long, slow, steadying breath.
“I’m here,” he said into her hair.
The agent across from her had stood up when Mason entered. Young guy, probably thirty, the particular look of someone who had a follow-up question he hadn't asked yet. He opened his mouth.
Mason turned to him, Sophia tucked to his side. “We're done,”
“Lieutenant Gault?”
“We're done.” He repeated. “Sophia and I are going home. You can talk to Agent Cruz.”
Cruz appeared in the doorway. She looked at the young agent, something passed between them, and he subsided.
“Lieutenant.” Cruz's voice stopped him at the door. He looked back at her.
Her eyes moved to Sophia for a moment, then back to him. “The minute you have something…”
“You’ll hear from me.”
He walked out with his wife.
Sophia held it together through the lobby. Through the building exit, through the heavy glass door and out into the morning air where the San Diego sun was already warm and the salt from the bay was faint on the wind.
She made it to the truck.
He got her to the passenger side and opened it, helping her in. She looked up at him with dry eyes. He knew they weren’t going to stay that way.
“Tell me what you know,” Mason said.
Her jaw worked. “They took her out in the open, right in the parking lot of the lacrosse field. One guy tried to stop him with his truck, but didn’t want to hurt Kayla, so he didn’t ram the van.” She stopped. Swallowed. “I wasn’t there, Mason. I wasn’t there.”
He put both hands on her face. Held it. Made her look at him.
“We’re going to get her back.”
“Mason—”
“Sophia.”
Firm.
Level.
Strong.
Every word landing exactly where he needed it to.
“We’re getting her back.”
Her hands came up and gripped his wrists. She held on and he let her. Around them the city moved with all its ordinary morning noise.
“Lydia,” she said finally.
“Yeah.”
“She'll have something.”
“She and Clint are probably already working together.”
“Really? How?”
“Get in the truck, and I’ll tell you.”
She got in the truck.
He walked to the driver's side, got in, and pulled out his phone. Thirty-six hours before Drake was home. He had Sophia. Lisa was inside the Preston Fortress.
Now it was time to hunt.