Chapter Nineteen #2
“But you said the police will just muck everything up and put people’s lives in danger. We can’t risk that,” Iris said, grabbing the front seat.
“I did say that,” Cal agreed calmly. “But when I said it, we were in a different situation. When you’re talking about a hostage situation, we’ll have to involve the police.
There aren’t enough of us here to get her out safely.
We’ll need SWAT, at the very least, depending on where they take her.
One thing at a time,” he said, turning left onto a dirt road. “Let’s see if Walter is at the cabin.”
“What’s the plan, boss?” Mack asked from the back seat. He’d insisted on coming along for extra backup. Iris appreciated that.
It was beyond pitch-black now that they were off the highway.
With clouds obscuring the moon, even the headlights barely made a dent in the darkness that surrounded them.
All too soon, Cal switched those off, too.
They would have to approach on foot on the off chance Walter and Zafar were at the cabin.
“From what I can see, we’re about as far as we dare go with the car,” he answered, pulling to the side of the road. “We all go in on foot, but Selina and Iris hang back with Haven once the cabin is in view.”
“We could wait in the car,” Selina suggested, but Iris objected.
“No. I want to be there if Bec is inside.”
Cal shook his head. “Selina, I know your shooting skills are superior, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you here with Iris unprotected.
If it was just you, I’d say you can hold your own, but not if you’re worried about her.
We all go. I expect this to be a wild-goose chase, but regardless, I want you to cover the road approach while we check the cabin. If something moves, shoot it. Clear?”
“Ten-four,” Selina said, opening her door.
They left the SUV, and Haven jumped down to follow Lucas out before she and Mack followed.
She took deep breaths, concentrating on the image of Bec’s face in her mind after she’d made love to her.
Happy. Sated. Maybe there was a touch of disbelief that they could feel that way about each other when they had just met.
The truth was that Iris knew everything she needed to know.
Bec was her due north, and if—no, when—they found her, she vowed to find a way to be with her.
She didn’t know if she could leave Secure Inc.
and follow Bec somewhere else, but for the first time, she wanted to try.
The thought of being without her was harder than risking everything to be with her.
There was nothing she wouldn’t do to hold her again.
Kiss her. Touch her. Spend her life with her.
Her anxiety felt manageable when she was in Bec’s arms. It would never be gone, but it was as though Bec agreed to carry a little bit of it for her so she could rest for the first time in twenty-six years.
As she picked her way down the road behind Mack, with Lucas and Selina bringing up the rear, she realized the changes she’d seen in herself in the last few days were astounding.
She would always be neurodivergent and have multiple disabilities because of her brain injury—love couldn’t cure that, but honestly, she didn’t want it to.
Those disabilities made her who she was and taking them away would have put her on a different path where she may not have met Bec.
Would her life have been easier? The short answer was yes, but she couldn’t say that definitively.
There are no guarantees in life, and anything could have happened at any time to make her life just as difficult.
She thought about Bec, and the strength and fortitude required to leave her home at such a young age and trust people she had never met to keep her safe.
The idea slowed her heart rate, and she inhaled deeply for the first time since leaving the car.
Bec was going to be okay. She was smart and savvy, and she could think on her feet.
All Iris had to do was trust her, just like she’d asked her to do before she opened that lab door.
Cal held up a closed fist when the cabin came into view, and they all stopped.
Cal, Lucas and Selina dropped into a crouch, but she and Mack both had foot drop and couldn’t do that.
He lowered himself to the ground and sat, so she followed his lead.
One light was burning from within the structure, which was clearly someone’s old hunting cabin.
She doubted there were more than two rooms inside, but that didn’t matter if it was just a place to hide out until their gigantic payday sent them off to the tropics, never to be seen again.
A car was parked to her right, and Cal motioned for Lucas to check it out.
He approached it silently, popping his head up to peer into the windows several times before he ran his hand across his neck as though to say, no go. It was empty.
Cal whispered. “Let’s approach as though whoever is behind those doors is alive and well.”
The three men walked toward the structure while Selina pulled her and Haven behind the car, her gun aimed at the dirt road they’d crept up. She planned to take Cal literally when he said to shoot anything that moves.
She heard the squeak of a doorknob and then silence. The longer there were no voices, the more her heart sank. If Bec was in there, she would have said something by now, right? But then it hit her that there were no voices, not even those of the Secure One guys.
“Secure One, Charlie,” Cal said as he came around the car and picked Iris up by her waist. He ran up the road, everyone falling into place behind them.
“Put me down, I can walk,” she said, confused about what was happening.
“We have four minutes to get the hell out of here before that cabin blows,” he said tightly. “This is a run, not walk, kind of situation.”
Before she could reply, she was shoved in the back of the SUV as everyone piled in behind her. She tried to right herself as Cal whipped the SUV and slammed the accelerator. She had no sooner buckled her seat belt than a loud blast blew her back in her seat.