Chapter 8 #3
I don’t see a way out for us here.
He really didn’t need an answer to what that meant.
“You’re thinking loud,” Chloe murmured around a bite of som tam.
“Am I?”
“Your jaw does this thing when you’re thinking. Sort of gets all tight, and your face looks cranky.”
“My face looks cranky?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Or maybe you are cranky.”
His mouth opened. Closed. And he sighed.
It wasn’t her fault that the way the twilight caught the gold in her hair made his trying to focus a near impossibility.
A truck rumbled past their position, belching black smoke. She turned back to the warehouse, binoculars raised.
Yeah, he was cranky. But maybe he should give their conversation another go.
“So.” He kept his voice casual. “When this is over . . .”
She tensed.
“Chloe?”
“There’s movement.”
Skeet grabbed his own binoculars, scanning the warehouse entrance.
A white sedan pulled up to the loading dock.
“That’s him,” Chloe said. “Volkov.”
Volkov stepped out wearing sunglasses and a crisp suit. Same confident bearing from the resort. They watched him disappear into the warehouse. His vehicle sat baking in the sun.
“We need to get closer.” Chloe was already reaching for the door handle.
“No.” He didn’t meant to be so blunt, but—“We confirm and report. That’s it.”
“But if we could hear—”
“Chloe.”
Something in his tone seemed to make her stop. She looked at him.
“We confirm and report,” he repeated, gentler this time. “Getting closer means getting dead.”
She settled back in her seat, but her grip on the binoculars stayed white-knuckled. “Fine. But we don’t leave until he does.”
“Agreed.”
Volkov left twenty minutes later, and they followed him out into traffic. The sedan let him off at the Peninsula Bangkok hotel.
“Should we follow him?”
“No,” Skeet said. “Time to collect the team. They’re due here in an hour.”
He drove through Bangkok’s congested traffic. Chloe stared out the window, lost in thought. Or avoiding conversation. Hard to tell which.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Just thinking about the implications.” She turned from the window. “What is going on in that warehouse?”
He glanced at her. “Chloe—let the team figure that part out.”
Her mouth tightened.
Traffic thinned as they approached the residential district, Bangkok’s urban chaos giving way to manicured order.
Ahead, ornate gates marked the entrance to Baan Sansiri, one of those upscale developments where expatriate executives lived behind walls topped with decorative spikes and twenty-four-hour security.
He’d found an Airbnb in a secure neighborhood. Mostly because he planned on leaving Chloe behind when the team arrived for a better look-see into the warehouse.
So maybe Chloe was right. This would never work between them.
“You can drop me off at the entrance and head straight to the airport.” Chloe pointed toward the gated community, where uniformed guards checked IDs from air-conditioned booths.
“I’ll drop you at the house.”
She glanced at him—he felt the burn on his neck. “I’ll be just fine.”
Skeet slowed as they approached the checkpoint, flashing their temporary-resident passes to the guard, who barely glanced up from his smartphone.
The gates slid open, revealing a neighborhood that could have been transplanted from suburban America—two-story contemporary houses with clean lines and driveways paved with interlocking stone.
Their Airbnb house sat midblock, its glass-and-concrete facade glowing in the evening light. Motion-sensor security lights illuminated the covered carport and front entrance.
“Nice and quiet,” Chloe said as he turned into the driveway. “Good for getting some work done.”
And for staying safe, he didn’t add. Though not safe enough to keep him from worrying about leaving her here alone.
“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” he said, keeping the engine running.
“Take your time. I’ve got plenty to write about.” She grabbed her bag from the back seat. “Maybe I can order in some food.”
His mouth opened.
She smiled at him. “I’ll be fine.”
That was debatable, but he bit back the comment. She was already climbing out.
“Chloe.”
She paused, one hand on the car door. “Yeah?”
“We’re going to finish talking about this.”
“About what?”
“You know what.”
Something flickered in her expression. “Focus on the mission, Skeet. That’s what matters right now.”
The door closed and he watched her walk toward the house.
She didn’t look back.
He didn’t know why that hurt.
Don Mueang’s terminal pull-up was chaos when he made it through traffic. The airport’s distinctive curved roof stretched across multiple terminals connected by covered walkways.
Skeet spotted his team before they saw him, emerging from international arrivals with the purposeful stride of people who traveled often and traveled light. Ham’s build made him easy to pick out of a crowd, even in civilian clothes.
North Gunderson followed a half step behind, a grim look on his face. Tall and broad-shouldered, a pastor’s kid before becoming a SEAL, he carried himself with moral certainty that made him both reassuring and intimidating.
West brought up the rear, looking like he’d been dragged away from a beach vacation.
Shorter than North but built like a brick house, with an easygoing demeanor that masked his explosives expertise.
The Hawaiian shirt and board shorts were pure West, along with the flip-flops that somehow didn’t diminish his capability.
Skeet pulled up to the curb and rolled down the window.
Ham opened the front passenger door, dropped his pack in, and got in. “Skeet.” Ham’s handshake was brief but firm. “Status?”
“Confirmed. Volkov showed up personally two hours ago.”
“Good.”
North got in the back, behind Ham. Skeet caught the worry in his eyes.
“Chloe holding up okay?”
“She’s fine.” The words came out more defensive than intended. “She’s been essential to this operation.”
North raised an eyebrow.
Great. The last thing he needed was his teammates reading anything into this.
West got in behind him. “Bruh. You got a tan.”
He met West’s gaze through the mirror. “Hazard of the job.”
West gave him a smile, but Skeet ignored it.
The drive back to the Airbnb took longer than expected. Rush-hour traffic had settled into its evening rhythm of controlled gridlock. By the time they pulled into the gated residential development, the sun had disappeared behind Bangkok’s skyline.
Skeet parked in the driveway and keyed in the code at the front door. The alarm system should have beeped its warning sequence.
Silence.
His heart thumped. “Chloe?”
No answer.
Ham dropped his bag on the floor. “Problem?”
“Alarm’s off.” Skeet moved through the lower level—family room, kitchen. “Chloe! You here?”
Nothing.
The living room looked undisturbed. Chloe’s laptop sat open on the coffee table, screen dark with sleep mode.
“Her computer’s here.” North’s voice carried the same edge that had crept into Skeet’s chest.
“Chloe!” Skeet called again, louder this time.
West appeared from a first-floor bedroom. “Not in there.”
“Upstairs.” Skeet took the steps two at a time, the other three behind him.
Empty bedrooms, bathrooms. Beds still made from this morning.
He walked back out into the hallway. “She’s not here.” He did an Oscar-worthy job of not letting the imploding of his chest leak out into his voice.
“Could she have gone out?” Ham had come upstairs behind him.
“Where? She doesn’t have a car. Doesn’t know the neighborhood.”
“Phone?”
Skeet was already dialing. Straight to voicemail. Dead battery or turned off.
“Maybe she went for food,” North suggested. “You said she mentioned getting something for the team.”
“Without telling me? Without leaving a note?” The words shot out of him. “That would be colossally stupid.”
Ham and North exchanged a look. And great, they were clearly starting to piece together why their teammate was unraveling.
Yeah, well, fine. Let them figure it out.
So he had fallen for her a little. Or a lot. Clearly the woman needed an entire spec ops team to keep her safe.
“If Leonid Volkov knows about her—or us—his people could have grabbed her while we were at the airport . . .”
The sentence hung unfinished because he couldn’t bear to complete it.
Because this was Narin in Myanmar all over again. Someone under his protection disappearing, kidnapped . . . and then what?
“Skeet,” Ham said. “Take a breath.”
“Whatever.” Skeet was already dialing Coco’s number. “We need surveillance footage from the neighborhood cameras. Traffic cameras on the access roads. Phone records—”
“Skeet? You back?”
The voice from downstairs made everyone freeze.
Chloe’s voice.
He was already heading to the stairs.
She stood in the entry holding a couple plastic bags. Grinning at him.
Like . . . she was some kind of hero. Like . . .
They were freakin’ partners. Teammates.
“I brought dinner.”
He hit the landing, breathing hard, and yeah—he had lost all semblance of “everything’s just fine” and “don’t let the team know.”
“Where were you?” The words ripped out of him, and she flinched.
“Getting food. Like I said I would.” She set the bags on the entry table, confusion clear in her voice. “My phone died or I would have texted—”
“No note. No message. The alarm was off. Sheesh, don’t you know anything about operational accountability? You don’t vanish without a word!”
“Skeet,” Ham said.
Chloe was staring at him. “I was gone less than an hour. The market’s only six blocks away.”
“Six blocks? You walked six blocks alone in Bangkok after dark?”
“It’s a safe neighborhood, and—”
“Safe?” His voice cracked on the word. “Volkov might know about you. His people could be anywhere. Watching. Waiting.”
The rest of the team had joined him in the entry, but Skeet barely registered their presence.
Chloe looked at them, back at him. “I brought pad thai,” she said quietly. “And mango sticky rice. Your favorite.”
His favorite.