17. Zoey
17
ZOEY
“Fifty-nine minutes to figure a way out of here,” Nathan murmured.
“I thought you were CIA. Just do your cutty thing and make it stop.” Zoey had seen a million CIA agents do it on TV.
“Really… I wasn’t trained in how to dismantle a bomb. That wasn’t the reason they recruited me. They wanted someone for intel. I was trained not to give information up and how to pry information out of someone.”
“How about the phone? Let’s call Cole.”
He pinched his brow. “Tried the phone before I untied you. No reception. Bryson, hopefully, was able to ping the phone sometime since I alerted him you were taken.”
Zoey narrowed her eyes. “Would’ve been nice if you gave me a heads-up. Furthermore, why did your dad leave the phone, but not help?”
“He thinks he is helping, but he didn’t, and when I make it out of here, I’m going to kill them both. Doesn’t matter he tried. The things he’s done in the past couple months are unforgivable. A bullet to the head would be too nice of a way to kill him. I’m going to make him pay.” His words were filled with hatred.
“First, we have to make it out of here and figure out how to remove the bomb attached to my body,” Zoey reminded Nathan. “Let me try to grab the phone and stick it through the window and see if we can get a signal.”
Nathan nodded again.
She ran to the phone lying on the floor and froze. Fuck. Cole’s phone number was programmed into hers, and she didn’t remember the number. Then it dawned on her—she didn’t know Cole’s number, but Jessica had made her memorize Brock’s. She quickly dialed the number in the phone and went back to the barred window.
Nathan raised a fire poker from the fireplace. “Stand back.”
He shoved it between the bars over the window and shattered the window. They heard footsteps in the house, running toward the door. They hadn’t accounted for more people in the house. Knowing her time was close to being up, she hit Send and placed the phone on speaker before putting her arm between the bars.
“Zo… ey… Zo?” Brock’s voice was breaking up, and she didn’t know if he would hear anything she said.
“Bomb. Cole’s parent’s vacation house. Thirty minutes.”
“Zo…”
She screamed the same thing over and over until someone hit her arm from the outside with so much force, it cracked between the bars. She dropped the phone, and it clattered to the ground. She fell back to the floor, holding her arm across her body, and cried. We’re not going to make it out of this alive.
Cole
Cole sat next to Bryson in the helicopter, watching out the window. Ian sat across from him, his arms crossed. Cole was afraid they were going to be too late. He’d thought he understood what Ian was going through when Bella had been kidnapped, but he’d had no clue. His heart was beating a mile a minute. He just hoped she was alive.
The helicopter slowly descended. They were a mile from the house. Cole knew Bryson wanted their parents dead, but saving Zoey was more critical at the moment. They would figure out the rest later. When the helicopter took off, Cole’s phone vibrated.
“Yes,” he answered.
“Get to that house now. You have thirty minutes.”
Cole took off running at a dead sprint. He heard Ian and Bryson running behind him. He should have been more worried about cover, but he needed to get to Zoey. Brock was still talking when he hung up the phone. He would call his friend back when he made it closer.
It was the quickest mile Cole had run in years, and he was surprised the two men behind him were keeping up. He was close to the house when he came to a stop. Ian hunched over next to him, catching his breath. Behind the house, he saw a man dressed in black, an assault rifle in his hands. The window above him was broken, and a phone lay on the ground.
Cole watched and waited as the guy passed back and forth. Bryson motioned to the shrubs on the other side. His brother was going to distract the guard. Two minutes later, Bryson was in position and rustled the shrub. The guard took notice and walked toward the noise. Cole used that opportunity to wrap one arm around his neck and the other hand over his mouth. The guard struggled in Cole’s arms as he slowly fell asleep. It wasn’t their goal to kill anyone. Cole dropped him to the ground, and Ian went to disarm him and zip tie his legs and hands.
Cole quickly looked around for another guard and didn’t see anyone. He rushed to the window, and his heart broke when he heard Zoey whimpering inside. “Zoey?”
The sound stopped immediately, and it was quiet.
“Zoey?” he said a little louder.
“Cole, is that you?” Nathan asked.
“Yes, are you guys alone?”
“There might be others in the house, but I heard another car leave not too long ago. We only have twenty minutes before the bomb goes off.”
Cole’s stomach dropped. Sniping someone from a thousand feet away, he could do. He could kill someone with his own bare hands. But disarm a bomb—he’d never learned that. Luckily, his long-time friend was a bomb expert.
“Ian.” Cole yelled for him to come to his side and leave Bryson to finish up taking care of the guard. “I need you to walk Nathan through disarming a bomb.”
“It’s not that simple,” he answered, running his hand through his hair. “That’s not something I can teach someone in minutes.”
“I don’t know how to open the room.”
“Come,” Bryson yelled as he headed for the door to the house. “I know how to disengage the lock to the room.”
Cole followed Bryson as he kicked down the door and shot the man who rounded the corner. His brother was in a hurry, and Cole wanted Zoey alive, so he didn’t care. Bryson gripped the panel to the room and ripped it off the wall. He reached his hand in and pulled out a couple of wires. Next, he grabbed the knife out of his pocket and cut the wires. Nothing happened. Then when he crossed them, the lock mechanism engaged and the door opened. Cole pushed his way into the room.
Zoey sat on the floor, clutching her arm, but it was the bomb strapped to her body that stopped him in his tracks. Ian ran past and squatted down next to her. Nathan sat on the other side, his back resting against the couch. Cole didn’t know how he was still awake. Bryson growled.
“Get him to a hospital. I will stay with Zoey and Ian.” Cole nodded toward his brother.
Zoey looked up at him with tears in her eyes. It was enough to crush his heart. He sat down behind her and ran his hand over her shoulder. He was working on getting out of Ian’s way so he could work on the bomb.
“Everyone needs to leave. We only have ten minutes left,” Zoey said between sobs.
Nobody moved. “I’m not leaving,” Nathan said before passing out on the ground.
“Please, Cole, I don’t want you to die,” Zoey said, trying to move her arm out of Ian’s way.
Cole called Brock. “We got here. Ian’s trying to disarm the bomb, but we are going to need a couple ambulances.”
“They are half an hour out, but I was trying to tell you before you hung up. Your parents are on their way back to the house, and they have a woman and child with them.”
“ETA?”
“They’re pulling down the driveway now.”
Cole didn’t need to ask Bryson if he’d heard, because his brother’s jaw flexed. “Thank you for everything, Brock. We got this.” He ended the call.
“Not trying to put pressure on you, but how much longer, Ian?”
Ian raised his head and narrowed his eyes for a second before going back to the bomb. A minute later, Ian was taking the vest off Zoey. It was disarmed, but the fight wasn’t over.
Cole pulled Zoey into his arms and cradled her for a second, wiping the tears away from her face. “Here.” He pushed a gun into her free hand. “Stay with Nathan and shoot anyone who walks through that door.”
Zoey rested her head against his chest. “She has Nathan’s kid.”
Bryson growled. “Protect him for us, Zoey.”
She nodded, and Cole captured her lips. He tried to pour all of his emotion into the kiss before releasing and whispering, “I love you,” across her lips.
“Ian, stay with her please,” Cole said.
He nodded. “End this.”
“I love you, Cole,” Zoey said before he left the room.
Bryson and Cole exited the house as their parents pulled up. Two men got out of the back. One was holding a small girl no older than three, and the other was holding a woman.
“You didn’t think I would find out about the helicopter landing on my land?” Cindy Walker spit out. “I raised a bunch of idiots. Your precious brother couldn’t even hide his whore and her kid.”
The little girl was sobbing in the man’s arms, and she looked just like a Walker, but not Nathan. She was the spitting image of Bryson. He glanced over at his brother to see his jaw tic.
Bryson walked slowly down the steps, and Cole followed, watching every move his mother made. She was waving her hands everywhere, still holding the gun. When she finally noticed Bryson and Cole were getting close, she turned the gun on Bryson. “Stop.”
“What are you going to do? Shoot me, Mom?” Bryson asked as he took another step forward. “I don’t think you have it in you to be the one to pull the trigger.”
She smirked. “Try me. Take another step forward.”
He did, and his mother squeezed the trigger twice, shooting Bryson in the chest. The force of the bullet pushed him backward, and he dropped to the ground. The woman in the bodyguard’s arms let out a blood-curdling scream.
Cole raised his gun and shot twice—once to the head and once to the heart. He turned his gun on the guards, and they dropped their hands from the woman and child and stepped away.
The woman grabbed her child and ran to Bryson. She dropped to her knees and clawed at his shirt. Over to the side, their father watched, not moving. The little girl was crying and sobbing as hard as her mom.
“Please don’t die, Bryson. Damn it, I love you.”
Bryson slowly moved on the ground and wrapped his arm around the woman, “Damn, all I had to do is get shot for you to finally admit you love me?”
She sat up and glared at him, and as the little girl climbed on his chest, he let out a groan. They had all made sure to put on bulletproof vests before coming to the house.
Cindy Walker was dead, and her husband still hadn’t moved from the spot next to her.
“Cole?” Zoey’s voice pulled his attention away from the scene. He went to her side and wrapped her in his arms.