Chapter Twenty-Five
Caymen
Nathaniel lived way out in the middle of nowhere. It was all swampland with suspicious lumps everyone knew meant not to get too close unless you wanted to end up in a death roll at the bottom of the water.
The houses that did exist came out of the water itself—just stilts, oversized porches, and small homes.
From a tactical standpoint, I guess it made a lot of sense for a paranoid ex-military and ex-consultant to decide to retire.
He could likely see anyone coming for half a mile off. There was no sneaking up on the property when it was mostly gator-infested water. And when I got to his property, I saw that he didn’t have a firm deck like everyone else.
Nope.
This bastard had a fucking rope bridge. The kind he could sever or set on fire if he sensed an invasion.
I imagined off the back, he had a deck and a boat launch for an easy escape, too.
I could see why Noa turned out as smart and careful as she did, if this was the blueprint.
“Alright,” I said, climbing off my bike at the edge of the narrow road to trek it toward the rope bridge on foot.
It was sweltering out here, the humidity at damn near a hundred percent thanks to all the water. Sweat beaded up but couldn’t cool me off.
I was just putting my foot on the first rope slat when a shotgun fired off, startling some parrots in the trees, making the sky flash in vivid color that I only noticed for a moment as my focus went right to the front porch.
Where Nathaniel Lane stood, shotgun aimed at the sky.
He was tall and fit with a full head of dark hair, medium-brown eyes, and a thick mustache.
“Next one goes in your chest if you don’t tell me why the fuck you’re on my property.”
Well, he was direct; I had to give him that.
“I’m here about your daughter.”
“What do you know about my daughter?”
Here was my chance to really prove that I wasn’t fucking with him.
“I know that she wears a bracelet with a handcuff key. And that she can’t cook for shit. And that she likes movies enough that when you were traveling, you always made sure to rent places close to a movie theater, so she could go anytime she wanted.”
Nathaniel’s jaw worked side to side for a second.
“So, you’re here about my daughter.”
“Yes, sir. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna spit it out. She’s been stalked, shot at, chased, and injured by someone for the past few days. And now… now he’s got her.”
“He got her,” he repeated, voice as dark as his eyes went, but everything else about him remained calm. “That why your face and knuckles look like that?”
“Yes.”
“Alright. Get over here and talk to me while I grab some more portable guns.”
I didn’t waste any time rushing across the ridiculously inconvenient rope bridge. By the time I got across it, I was out of breath and my palms felt raw from gripping the damn sides so hard.
Nathaniel left the door open, so I moved inside.
It was kind of what I expected. Masculine. A little under-decorated. Like Noa’s safe house, it was one big room with leather furniture and a large bed.
Unlike Noa’s safe house, the kitchen actually looked like he used it. There was a pot full of soapy water in the sink. And a gun sitting out on the counter.
In fact, there were guns just about everywhere: the nightstand, coffee table, mounted on the damn wall.
The only other thing on the wall, though?
A collage of pictures of Noa.
It was surprisingly sentimental for a hard man.
I couldn’t stop myself from walking over, spotting the round-faced baby, the golden-haired toddler, then the darker-haired kid and teen.
Caught staring, I looked back at Nathaniel who’d come back from digging through his foot locker.
“Remind me when all this is over to give her shit about the goth phase she conveniently ‘forgot’ to tell me about.”
That got a huff out of him.
“Okay. Tell me what’s been going on.”
I did.
Launched into it with the full picture that dated back to the stoner guys getting the guns, to Zayn hiring Noa, the theft, and the escape from police custody.
“That’s my girl,” he mumbled under his breath.
“It was impressive as fuck,” I agreed.
From there, it was the shootout, the car chase, the safe house, the boat, the tracker, the fight and the kidnapping.
“We’ve done everything we could to try to find the car that he left in on traffic cameras, but…”
“It’s a simple black car with fake plates,” he guessed.
“Exactly. And now that we know this wasn’t related to the guys with the guns, we thought it could have to do with previous cases. But I don’t know about her cases. She mentioned that you… kept a close eye on her.”
“That your nice way of saying that she called me nosy? Don’t gotta sugarcoat shit with me. She called me nosy right to my face. Wasn’t wrong, either. But you’re right. I’ve been keeping an eye. Trained her well, but I still worry. She’s all I got.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
“You came on a bike, right?”
“Right.”
“Then let’s get a move on,” he said, walking toward the back of the house.
“Where are we going?”
“See that boat? There,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I got a car. But we gotta go across the water to get to it.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
So I held his guns while he got the boat ready, handed them over, then climbed in myself.
My stomach dropped, the memory of fleeing from the boat in the tender still way too fresh in my mind.
All the fear, panic, and desperation I’d felt then had only amplified in the hours since.
“Hang on,” Nathaniel warned.
Then he pushed the throttle and we fucking flew through the water.
I glanced at Noa’s old man, then the place he chose to call home.
I couldn’t help but wish that this wasn’t how I was meeting him.
This wasn’t how it was meant to be. I was supposed to be in some itchy dress-up outfit, jangling with nerves, sweating across my scalp and down my back, worried her father would hate me and tell her to dump me.
I made a mental note that when we got Noa back, I would insist on the three of us having a proper introduction. Awkwardness and all.
The boat ride was longer than I expected and the engine was too loud for us to really be able to hear each other, so we were silent, both lost in our own thoughts about the one thread tying us together.
Noa.
And what could be happening to her.
Nathaniel’s hands were white on the wheel and I could tell by the look in his eye that he was a million miles away. Likely beating himself up for raising his daughter to be so skilled that she felt drawn to a career that would be dangerous.
“Always been worried this would happen,” he said, confirming my thoughts, when we finally got to land.
He climbed out, leaving the keys, but taking his guns.
“Has she had issues before?”
“She’s had some tight spots she’s squeezed out of. But she’s only been hurt a handful of times. And never seriously. I’m sure she has played it all down for me, though, so who knows.”
Yeah, I got that impression from her too. She didn’t want him to interfere, but she also didn’t want him to worry. And, maybe underneath that all, she also didn’t want him to see her as incapable. It couldn’t be easy when your old man was good at everything.
“What was the last job she did before this current one?”
“Worked a deal between a cartel boss and his wife who changed the codes to his safe before she left because he was keeping her dog from her out of spite.”
“Seriously?”
“Yep. It ain’t all guns and action sequences in the broker game.”
“Guess not,” I agreed. “This is yours?” I asked when we approached an ancient red pickup truck with the metal rusted around the wheel wells and paint so faded it was almost white in spots.
“Just rebuilt her engine. Should get another four-hundred-thousand miles out of her.”
With that, we both climbed in.
“Where am I headed?”
“Miami for now. It’s where she was taken from but we don’t have a direction yet,” I told him. “Shit,” I said when my phone registered two missed calls.
“What?”
“My president,” I said, shooting off a text so he didn’t worry.
“How long you been a biker?”
“Not long. Still technically prospecting. Me and my brother.”
“You the oldest?”
“By about a decade.”
“Club let you stop being the parent, huh?”
“Something like that. But not entirely,” I said, a little put off by his ability to read the situation so easily.
“He’ll always be the little kid to some extent, and you the one who’s gotta protect him.”
“Yeah.”
“Know that feeling well.”
“Noa didn’t mention an uncle.”
“She didn’t have one. My brother, Noah, died overseas right before she was born.”
“Sorry to hear that.” But it also gave Noa’s name a lot more meaning than ‘her old man probably wanted a boy.’
“My advice: no matter how much he hates it, keep breathing down his neck. Shoulda talked my brother out of following me into the service.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
“Yet,” he said, sighing. “And I shoulda talked my girl out of this career path too.”
“In your defense, I’m sure that would have backfired on you. She has a stubborn streak.”
“That she does.”
“I’m half-expecting us to find her and see she not only freed herself from the zip cuffs but hogtied her attacker.”
That got a small smile out of Nathaniel. “We can only hope. So, you’re positive these stoners couldn’t have been behind this?”
“Yeah. They’re too burnt out to set up some elaborate plan. We found the guns in the backyard.”
“They did break into the warehouse.”
“Only because Noa taught one of them how to pick a lock.”
He snorted out a laugh at that.
“Tell me again about the guy you saw.”
“I can do you one better than that,” I said, reaching for my phone. “My club brother is married to an artist. We worked on a sketch.”
I held the phone out toward him.
Nathaniel glanced over.
Then he slammed on the brakes hard enough to make them squeal.
He snatched the phone out of my hand, staring harder at the image.
“This is him? You’re sure this was the guy?”
“Within a five percent degree of certainty. The chin feels off to me still.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, nodding. There was that flick of the muscle in his jaw again. “Yeah, because it’s cleft.”
The second he said it, the memory came back, sharper, with that detail attached.
He was right.
It had been a cleft chin.
There was a dark look in his eye then, but beneath it, something akin to confusion. Or maybe even… hurt?
“Nathaniel, you know who he is?”
He sucked in a breath that had his broad chest spreading wider still.
“Oh, yeah. I know him.”