Chapter 1
Two weeks later...
Cate sat sandwiched between Marta Hale and Draco Thornton.
On the outside, she’d stopped shaking. On the inside, not so much.
Having survived one kidnapping, she hadn’t expected to be kidnapped again so soon.
She seriously doubted she’d ever get into another taxi alone again. Ever. She shivered at the thought.
“Hey.” Draco’s breath warmed her ear. “You okay?”
“I’m here,” she said, glad for his arm draped over her shoulders. “Just chilled.”
His arm tightened around her shoulders, pulling her closer against his side.
She let him, promising herself she wouldn’t get too used to having him around. He’d left her once before. What was to stop him from leaving again? Her heart had been bruised then. She didn’t want to feel that way again.
Dr. Marta Hale reached for her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.
“I was shocked when that car took off with you in it. It took me a full second to realize he’d left without Draco.
” Her fingers tightened around Cate’s. “When it crashed into that light pole...” She shook her head, drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “I’m just glad you weren’t hurt.”
“Me, too,” Draco said. “I think I lost a week off my life between the time the driver took off with you and the crash.”
Cate laughed without mirth. “I lost a year off mine.” She shivered again. “And like you,” she said to Marta, “it took a full second for it to dawn on me that the driver had left Draco on purpose. The locked doors were my clue.”
“What are the odds of being kidnapped twice in as many weeks?” Marta wondered.
“I don’t know.” Cate’s free hand clenched into a fist. “But I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.”
“Forcing the driver to crash was brilliant,” Crusher said.
“And incredibly dangerous,” Draco said, his tone tight, his lips tighter. “You could’ve been thrown through the windshield.” The arm around her shoulder tightened again.
“Thankfully, I wasn’t. But I’d rather go through a windshield than be captured by another lunatic bent on bioterrorism.”
“Any idea who might have done it?” Crusher asked the same question the Zurich Polizei officer had asked.
Cate didn’t have any more of an answer for Crusher than she’d had for the law enforcement officer. “I mean, I was kidnapped the first time as ransom to get my father to send a rescue team to find Dr. Hale in Colombia.”
“We wrapped up that debacle in Vienna,” Crusher said. “Why would someone go after you now?”
“Why me and not Marta?” Cate asked. “I’m not the scientist.”
“They targeted you,” Draco said, his tone flat.
Cate nodded. “Yeah. I think it has something to do with the case I was working on before I was kidnapped. I was about to book a flight from London to Zurich when Pieter Teuling’s thugs took me.”
“You are going to tell us what all that was about, aren’t you?” Marta asked.
“I will,” she said. “Now that we’re here, I can do that.”
The car pulled to a stop at the curb in front of the restaurant where they were to meet the rest of Draco’s Stealth Operations Specialists team and members of the Brotherhood Protectors International.
She’d heard about the Brotherhood Protectors from her father, but she hadn’t known the organization had begun conducting international operations. SOS was another operation altogether.
Formerly a secret organization within the US government, similar to the military special forces, SOS had handled highly sensitive, top-secret operations her father hadn’t been permitted to brief her on.
Her father had worked with members of SOS, including the two men sitting with her in the car.
That’s how she’d met Draco months earlier.
When SOS pulled up stakes and left the US government and the DC area, Draco had moved with them to Texas without bothering to talk with her about it. He’d just left.
Now, he was here with her in Zurich. He’d been there when the SOS team had busted Marta and her out of Teuling’s factory, and again when they’d cornered Teuling at the convention in Vienna, where his plan to introduce a pandemic to unsuspecting populations had been blown wide open and stopped before he could initiate it.
As the driver shifted into park, Draco sprang from the vehicle and held out a hand to help Cate out.
“I can get out on my own, you know,” she murmured at the same time as she placed her hand in his.
“I know,” he said.
She let him pull her to her feet. After the car had taken off and crashed, Draco had been there to pull her out of the wreckage.
He’d held her together when she’d thought she might fall apart.
Her legs still shook as she stood, and she didn’t have much fight left to argue over a stupid door.
“Thank you,” she said, more attitude than gratitude.
As soon as she was steady, she put a little space between them.
He closed that space and rested a hand against the small of her back.
“You’re like a helicopter,” she groused.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“You’re hovering over me,” she said with a heavy frown.
“It’s not hovering,” he assured her. “I’m escorting you.”
“Is that what you call it?” she asked. “Feels more like hovering.”
“My mother taught me that men tend to act like baboons, thinking they have to prove their strength and dominance to get the girls.” He retracted his arm and made a pounding motion against his chest. “You know, like this.”
Cate’s lips twitched at Draco’s demonstration. “Is that right?”
Draco shook his head. “No. That was her point. If you want to get the girls, you treat them with a lighter touch.” Again, he rested his hand gently against the small of her back.
“Let her know she’s free to move away if she doesn’t want your touch.
Give her the choice, and she might choose you.
If she doesn’t, she likely wasn’t interested to begin with. Thus, the escort versus the baboon.”
“What was that move you just made?” Crusher asked. “I’d like to try that sometime.”
“The escort?” Draco asked.
“No, the chest-pounding baboon one,” Crusher said, his serious expression splitting into a grin.
Cate laughed, the events of the evening lightening the weight in her chest. Draco had always been able to make her laugh.
When she’d been at her lowest, or when stress had left her feeling ragged at the end of a trying day, he’d been able to cheer her up with one of his crazy stories about growing up.
Crusher moved toward the restaurant door and held it wide.
Marta gave Cate a nod and a slight smile, indicating she should go first and that they had her back.
Cate gave the doctor a grateful smile. Marta had been her lifeline after Cate had been trapped in Teuling’s factory for a week without contact with family, friends or anyone who spoke English. The scientist had promised to get her out of there and that she wouldn’t leave Cate behind.
When the men had made their move to infiltrate the factory, they’d come for Marta. Draco had come for Cate.
The restaurant sat a few blocks off the Limmat River in Zurich.
Light shone from the windows into the darkening sky.
The group of four was met at the door by a man wearing a crisp white shirt and black tie.
He led them to a room in the back where a long table had been set for the men and women of the combined team that had handled the crisis in Vienna.
They were there to celebrate their successful collaboration and the return of the two women who’d been kidnapped.
“About time you showed up.” Ace Hammer, the leader of the Brotherhood Protectors International, stood as the four latecomers entered. “We were about to send a search party.”
“I thought Crusher sent word of our delay,” Draco said.
“I did,” Crusher said. “He’s giving us a hard time.”
Hammer grinned, and then his smile disappeared. “I’m glad you’re all here and, from what Crusher said, unharmed.” His brow knitted as he studied Cate. “Are you okay?”
Cate nodded. “I am now.”
“Cate,” Devon Marsh hurried around the end of the table and enveloped his daughter in a hug.
“I’m beginning to think we need to cocoon you in bubble wrap.
” He set her at arm’s length, his gaze canvassing her face and sweeping over her as he’d done so many times when she’d been a child and had crashed her bicycle or fallen out of a tree. “Are you really okay? You’re not hurt?”
Cate’s lips twisted. “I’m really okay, Dad.”
He stared at her, his eyes dangerously glassy.
The man who’d stood toe-to-toe with foreign leaders, never backing down, looked ready to shatter into a million pieces.
“You’re not okay, Catherine. Kidnapped two weeks ago, almost kidnapped again, and in a car crash?
” He shook his head. “You’re not okay, and neither am I.
You’re coming home with me on the next flight to the States. ”
“No, Daddy,” she said softly. “I have a job to do. I think what happened tonight relates to it. I can’t let it go. Someone I care about could have her life ruined if I don’t figure out this mess.”
For a long moment, he held her gaze. He cupped her cheeks in his hands, his fingers trembling against her skin. “I’m so afraid for you, Cate. You’re all the family I have.”
“And you’re all I have.” Cate wrapped her hands around his and lowered their arms to their sides. “I’m not going anywhere. I have to do this. Before, it was for a friend. Now, they’ve made it personal. You, of all people, should understand.”
Finally, he nodded, tipped her head to press a kiss to her forehead like he’d done all her childhood. “I do. You wouldn’t be my daughter if you tucked tail and ran. But let me have my moment of fatherly concern before you go forge your own path.”
Cate hugged him tightly, having come so close to never seeing him again. Then she straightened and looked at the people gathered around the table. “Did Dmytro make it?”
“Just,” a gruff voice with a distinctive Ukrainian accent said behind them.