Chapter 29
Razorback awoke before dawn, his head aching like he’d been drinking. He opened his eyes and took in his surroundings, his stare catching on the empty space beside him in the bed.
Jackie.
All of it came rushing back. Her in his bed, the two of them making love. Her standing naked while he made a fool out of himself like a cranky teenager and told her to leave.
He covered his face with his hand. “Oh, fuck.”
What the hell had he been thinking?
He remembered her touch on his face, her kisses, as if she could make it all better somehow. How it had made him feel like a fool. He’d called her patronizing and she’d denied it. He threw back the covers and sat with his head in his hands. “Double fuck.”
He’d managed to take the best night he’d had in years and twist it into a goddamn pity party. A fight she couldn’t win, one he’d never live down and she wouldn’t forget.
Shame on him for letting himself get caught up in her. Concern and protectiveness had grown into admiration and lust. Strong feelings for a strong woman, either of which had the power to knock him down as they had last night.
He moved to the window, his mind littered with images from the night before.
Her competitive spirit wrestling with his.
Her acquiescence pleasing him as much as her body.
He already knew her well enough to know that wouldn’t have been the last match of its kind, if only he had handled things differently.
Yeah? And how should you have handled it?
He wasn’t a man who could be with a woman long-term. Not anymore. It was right that he should end it now, before the mission was over. A clean break. He didn’t want a relationship with anyone, and definitely not a woman as all-consuming as Jackie Desjardins.
He showered carefully, avoiding the worst of his burns. He told himself he was right. He’d be all business today, there to make sure she got backstage without a hitch and in one piece, too. A bodyguard for the last leg of the race, one she probably didn’t even need.
The sun was up by the time he’d shaved and dressed for the day.
They still had several hours before they’d planned to go to the convention center, but damned if he would sit here like he was hiding from her.
He opened the adjoining door to her room, only to find hers closed and locked, par for the course he’d carved out of this turf.
“Jackie?”
Nothing.
He went to the hotel phone and dialed her room. It rang off the hook, the first real stirring of concern settling into his gut. The longer he knocked, the more he wondered if she was in there at all. And what if she wasn’t? Would she have gone to the convention center without him?
No way.
He checked his phone for messages. “God fucking damn it!” he yelled upon reading hers, stomping his foot and throwing the device hard at the padded headboard.
There was no telling what she was walking into.
What if she ran into McGrath or managed to confront him alone?
With his entire career on the line, what was to stop him from strangling her with his bare hands?
She was acting as if there was no danger, like she didn’t need Razorback with her, and that was just stupidity on her part.
She did it because you pushed her away, asshole. It’s your fault she went alone.
Razorback had told her to go away and that’s just what she did. If something happened to her, it would be entirely his fault, and he cursed himself.
He packed up his gear, carefully selected to get through the metal detector he was sure to encounter if he was able to get into the convention center at all, which was damn unlikely without her.
There was no way to tell where she’d gone, and he was torn between going out to look for her and staying put in case she returned.
His phone rang. “Ian, I’ve got some bad news,” said Cowboy, the tone of his voice even more foreboding than his words. “Sloan missed his check-in this morning, and Moto’s showing three more members of SVX landing on a plane in Mexico City the day after the fire.”
“What?” Razorback’s brain seemed to squeeze, his vision going dim as he broke out in a terrified sweat. Selena was with Sloan. Selena was with Sloan and something was terribly wrong if Sloan hadn’t called into HERO Force on time. “How late is he?”
“Two hours. Cowboy’s team just went wheels up in Atlanta.”
“Two hours!” That was a goddamn eternity. “They can’t get there fast enough!” He pushed his shoulders back, the adrenaline in his bloodstream commanding him to run, fight, anything but stand helplessly in a hotel room thousands of miles away.
“The Mexican authorities are helping us look for them. Did Jackie see anyone who recognized her? Could they have figured out she was there?”
“No, nobody—” Razorback froze, remembering Jackie at the front desk of the hotel, giving her name for her own room. “Christ, Cowboy. The front desk. She gave her name last night at the front desk, so it’s in the computer.”
“Goddamn it! If SVX found Sloan and Selena, then they knew Jackie wasn’t there. The convention is the first place they’d look for her. They’re going to use Selena to keep her mother from exposing McGrath.”
“Or else they’ve already killed her.” The words were out of Razorback’s mouth before they registered in his brain.
It was impossible to comprehend, yet his military mind knew it was the most likely scenario.
SVX could coerce Jackie into cooperating without proof of life.
They had no intention of leaving her alive, anyway.
Nausea threatened his usually strong stomach as he took off running, the phone still in his hand.
He grabbed his key card and dashed into the hallway, pounding on the door to Jackie’s room.
It fell open at the first touch. Tool marks between the key card device and the wood told him it had been tampered with.
“Jesus. Someone broke into her room.” He ran inside, searching for something, anything at all.
“She texted me and said she was going to the convention alone. It was a ruse. A cover.” This couldn’t be happening.
Jackie had been taken from her room right under his damn nose.
His training took over when emotions would have locked his mind like a steel trap.
“I’ll have hotel security pull up the surveillance video.
You find Selena, you hear? Just find my girl. ”
He hung up the phone and made his way downstairs, insisting on speaking with the head of hotel security, a woman in a navy blue suit and heels. But when he explained he needed to see surveillance video, he was brought to a small office with what appeared to be a teenage boy in jeans and a hoodie.
Razorback had always stayed cool under pressure, but this time he was panicked, out of control, scared. “I need to see who she left with and where they went. Can you do that?”
“Our system is equipped with facial recognition software,” the kid said, typing furiously in a hunt-and-peck kind of way.
He quickly found the footage from check-in, locking in on Jackie’s features.
“Starting the scan now.” A list of several time-stamped files showed up on the screen.
“These are images of your friend from every camera she passed by.”
Razorback watched as she exited her room just after six, returning with coffee. She met with a man in the lobby and went back to her room. “Who is that guy?” he asked.
The head of security entered the room. “Any luck?” she asked.
“I need that guy’s name,” Razorback said, pointing at the screen. The kid scanned the man’s features and searched again. “That’s the only footage we have of him, so he’s not a guest of the hotel.”
The woman leaned closer to the screen. “Wait, Jesse, zoom in on that image. Isn’t that Frank Gough? The news anchor for Channel 13.”
The kid blew out air. “I don’t watch the news.” He opened a browser window and searched for the reporter, deftly copying the man’s photo from the station website and importing it into his facial recognition program. “That’s him, all right.”
Jackie met with a reporter? When had she set that up?
The last he knew, going to the media before her appearance at the convention wasn’t part of the plan.
“Stay with that angle,” said Razorback. “We need to see who breaks into the room.” His eyes were riveted to the screen as the kid fast-forwarded through the recording.
But instead of someone breaking in, they saw Jackie walking out, alone.
Razorback sat back in his chair, confused. “Follow her.” The video moved seamlessly from the hallway to the elevator, then to the lobby, where Jackie again met up with the reporter. They walked out of the building together, heading toward the convention center.
“That’s it,” said the kid.
Razorback leaned forward in his chair. “Go to the next clip of her in the hotel.”
“That’s all I’ve got. She never came back.”
“Then when the hell was her room broken into?”
“Let’s see.” The kid brought up the video from Jackie’s hallway, fast-forwarding to the attempted break-in.
A man in a T-shirt and dark pants, his face carefully turned away from the camera.
He appeared to leave empty-handed. “That’s pretty amazing that we never got a look at his face,” said the kid.
“Not amazing. Deliberate.”
Fucking SVX.
He thanked the kid and head of security and walked outside to the street. Hopefully, Jackie was safe in the convention center, and he still needed to find a way inside. The thought instantly reminded him of Selena and Sloan, his gut telling him those two were anything but safe.
He could see Selena in her baggy rainbow bathing suit, glaring at him, see her pudgy little hand jutting out to color whenever he looked at her.
He couldn’t breathe, could barely think.
He bowed his head, not sure he believed in angels, but knowing he’d make it through the fire at the resort somehow and that he needed the help of one angel in particular more than he’d ever needed anything before in his life.
Peaches, it’s Razorback. Are you there?