Chapter 33
The phone call rang once. Twice. Three times. Then went to Janice’s voicemail.
Cole's blood ran cold, but before he had to wonder why she wasn’t answering, his phone rang. Seeing Frazier’s name, he let out a sigh of relief. If she was with them, all was good.
"Tell me you're close," Cole answered.
"We got to the hotel. Janice isn’t here.”
Cole's hand froze on the door handle. Something in Frazier's voice made his blood run cold.
"What the fuck?"
"The door to your room was open. Food bags spilled on the floor outside. Looks like there was a struggle."
The world tilted sideways. Cole gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles going white. "Where is she?"
"Gone. We're checking with the front desk now, but—"
Cole didn't hear the rest. He was already flooring the accelerator toward town.
"Cole, listen to me." Frazier's voice cut through the roar of blood in Cole's ears. "Sadie's pulling up the tracker data now. Janice's wearing that pendant, right? We'll know exactly where she is within minutes."
"How long ago?" Cole forced the words through clenched teeth, weaving through traffic, grateful for years of tactical driving. "How long has she been gone?"
"Unknown. But the food was still warm when we got here, so it couldn't have been more than twenty minutes. Maybe less."
Twenty minutes. Half an hour where Janice had been in the hands of whoever had taken her. Twenty minutes of terror and not knowing if help was coming. He couldn't finish the thought. Couldn't let himself imagine what might be happening to her right now.
Cole's vision narrowed to a red haze. His hands shook on the wheel, both from fear and the violent rage coursing through his system. “Fuck, I should have stayed with her. I went to fuckin’ Penson’s place this morning to place more cameras inside.”
He tried to slow his breathing. "I’ll be at the hotel in a couple of minutes. Tell Sadie I want to know what’s on the tracker," he snapped. "Now. And tell Logan to coordinate with local law enforcement. We need every asset we have on this."
"Already happening. Sadie's got the tracker pulled up. She's heading—" Frazier's voice was cut off, replaced by a new voice on the line.
"Cole, it's Logan." His boss's tone was the calm, controlled voice of command that had guided countless operations. "Sadie has Janice's location. She's moving, currently heading northeast from town. The trajectory suggests they're taking her toward Penson's property."
Penson. Of course it was goddamn Penson. The bastard must have figured out Janice was at the hotel and sent his goons to grab her. But how?
Cole's foot pressed harder on the accelerator, the SUV's engine roaring as he blew through a yellow light. “I’ll head out—”
"Negative." Logan's voice held an edge of steel. "You're not going in alone and half-cocked. Timothy, Frazier, and Dalton are at the hotel now. You rendezvous with them, we coordinate the approach, and extract Janice as a team. That's an order, Cole."
"She could be dead in the time it takes to coordinate!" Cole heard his voice crack, heard the desperation bleeding through. "Logan, I can't—"
"Yes, you can." Logan's tone softened fractionally.
"I know you want to tear apart anyone who touched her.
But going in emotional and alone is how you get both of you killed.
You know this, Cole. You've trained for this.
Now I need you to be the operator I know you are, not the man whose woman is in danger. "
The words hit like a slap, cutting through the red haze just enough for reason to peek through. Logan was right. Of course he was right. Charging in without backup, without intel, without a plan was how missions failed. That was how people died.
But this wasn't just any mission. This was Janice.
"The tracker shows she's stopped moving," Logan continued. "She's at Penson's house. That's actually good news. It means they're not taking her to some remote location. The house has the surveillance equipment you planted this morning. Sadie's pulling up the feeds now."
Cole forced himself to breathe, forced his racing heart to slow, forced his hands to steady on the wheel.
Logan was right. They had advantages here.
The cameras and listening devices meant they'd have intel on Janice's location and condition.
The tracker enabled them to coordinate her exact position.
And with Timothy, Frazier, and Dalton as backup, they had the firepower and tactical expertise to execute a proper extraction.
"Copy that," Cole said, his voice steadier now. "I'm at the hotel. I'll coordinate with the team."
"Good man." Logan paused. "Cole, I'm running this operation from headquarters. Sadie's monitoring all feeds and the tracker in real time. We will get her back. I promise you that."
Cole didn't say anything. Couldn't respond past the lump in his throat. He ended the call and focused on maintaining the professional detachment that had served him through countless dangerous situations.
But beneath that detachment, rage simmered. Someone had hurt Janice. Had scared her. Had put their hands on her and dragged her away from safety.
And Cole was going to make them pay for every second of terror they'd caused her. He swung into the parking lot hard enough to make the tires protest. He was out of the SUV before it had fully stopped, taking the stairs two at a time.
Timothy and Dalton stood in the hallway outside room 7, their expressions grim. Frazier was inside the room, phone pressed to his ear, presumably talking to Sadie or Logan.
Cole's eyes went to the spilled food first. Two large bags, their contents scattered across the hallway floor.
Burgers and fries, containers split open, food scattered across the carpet.
He stomped through the door, and Cole could see the room undisturbed except for Janice's absence and the mess on the carpet.
"Tell me everything," he said, his voice flat and hard.
"Food delivery came from the tavern," Timothy said. "We talked to the woman who runs it—Donna. She said Janice called in an order, claimed she was sick and couldn't come pick it up. Donna brought it here herself."
"And?"
"And when she got here, she set the bags down and knocked. Janice didn’t open the door." Timothy's jaw tightened.
“She probably didn’t want Donna to discover that she really wasn’t sick.”
Frazier turned to them, his phone still in hand. "Sadie's got the surveillance feeds from Penson's house live now. Janice's in his office. She's alive, appears uninjured, and she's talking to him."
Relief crashed over Cole so intensely that his knees went weak. Alive. She was alive.
"What's he saying to her?" Cole moved past Frazier into the room, where a laptop sat open on the bed, streaming the video feed from the camera he’d planted that morning.
The angle wasn't perfect. He'd positioned it to capture the room broadly rather than focusing on any specific area, but Cole could see Janice clearly enough.
She sat in a chair facing Penson's desk, her posture tense but upright.
No visible injuries that he could see. No blood, no obvious signs of violence.
But the fear in her eyes, visible even through the grainy feed, made Cole want to put his fist through a wall.
"She's stalling," Frazier said quietly, moving to stand beside Cole. "Listen."
Cole focused on the audio feed, picking up Janice's voice mid-sentence.
"...behavioral changes in response to environmental factors. Climate change, seasonal variations, water chemistry fluctuations—all of it affects animal behavior and population dynamics."
She was talking about her research, burying Penson in scientific jargon and drawing out the conversation to buy herself time. Smart. Good play.
"How long has she been there?" Cole asked.
"Ten minutes." Frazier checked his watch. "She's doing good, Cole. She's keeping him talking, not giving him what he wants."
On the screen, Penson stood abruptly, clearly frustrated. Cole couldn't make out all the words, but the body language was clear enough. The conversation was ending.
Then Penson's voice came through clearly: "Take her to the camp."
Cole's blood turned to ice. The camp. The illegal mining site. Remote, isolated, the perfect place to make someone disappear.
"Fuck," he breathed.
"We move now," Frazier said, already pulling up maps on his phone. "The mining camp is approximately thirty miles northeast of Penson's house. If they're taking her there, we have maybe forty-five minutes before she's in a location that's much harder to extract from."
Cole's phone buzzed, and he looked at the ID.
"I heard," his boss said without preamble. "Sadie's coordinating with the local FBI field office. They're mobilizing, but they're two hours out. You're going to have to handle initial extraction."
"We're already moving," Cole said, his mind shifting into tactical mode. The emotion didn't disappear when it came to Janice, but he compartmentalized it, shoving it into a box he'd open later when she was safe.
Right now, he needed to be the operator. The professional. The man who'd executed dozens of successful extractions under worse conditions.
"Approach strategy?" Logan asked.
"We follow the tracker to the camp. I’ve only been there from the other side of the water, from Janice’s cabin.
We’ll establish overwatch positions, assess hostiles, and Janice's location.
" Cole was already mentally mapping the terrain from his earlier flights over the area.
"Timothy, Frazier, and Dalton run point on extraction. I go in for Janice."
"You're close to this, Cole. Can you handle primary?"
"With respect, boss, yes." Cole's voice was steel. "I'm getting her back, and I don't care what the rulebook says about emotional compromise."
"Understood. But, Cole, keep your head. You follow Frazier's tactical lead. And you do not, under any circumstances, let revenge override mission success. Janice needs you functional, not dead because you went after Penson with your bare hands."