Chapter Three
CAMERON SIMS SLAMMED the back door of his cruiser, grateful he’d been able to hose out the backseat with little difficulty.
He snorted. Those hard plastic benches in the back of his patrol car were a godsend when you picked up men like Theo, who began their alcohol consumption as soon as their feet hit the floor in the morning.
Clean up comprised hosing out the cruiser and a spritz of air freshener, and he called it good.
As he wound the hose around the hose holder, he thought about Sedona Hart, the woman who had fascinated him from the moment she walked into his life. A man could dream, right? He sighed. Sure. He was only hurting himself by reaching for what he shouldn’t look at, much less touch.
Minutes later, he parked in the driveway in front of her house. Frowning, he climbed out of his vehicle. Her SUV wasn’t in the driveway, and there were no lights on in the house. Was she still at the elementary school?
Cam walked to the front door and rang the bell. When she didn’t answer, he knocked on the door.
Still nothing.
Uneasiness grew in his gut. Being out this late at night wasn’t the norm for her. Finding Sedona just topped his list of priorities.
Cam returned to his cruiser and grabbed his handheld mic. He paused. He should go to the school first and see if her SUV was still in the faculty parking lot. If so, he could offer to follow her home.
Soon, he drove around to the back of the elementary school and parked a short distance away from Sedona’s vehicle. Cam scanned the area before he climbed out of his cruiser and approached the SUV with a large flashlight in his hand.
He aimed the beam of light toward the SUV, pulling up short when the light skimmed over something purple on the ground.
Cam crouched beside the bag and the purse.
He tugged a pair of thin rubber gloves onto his hands and rifled through the purse and pulled out the wallet to confirm what he already knew.
Inside the wallet were Sedona’s license, credit cards, and cash.
He grabbed his phone and punched in David Montgomery’s number. His boss answered on the first ring.
“Go.”
“Sedona’s in trouble.”
“Explain.”
Cam summarized what he knew, which wasn’t much. “I believe she was kidnapped as she was leaving school.”
Man, how would he find her without at least a starting point? He and four other men from his Delta unit had gone on several search and rescue missions while they were in the Sandbox on deployment. Cam knew he could find Sedona if he had a starting point, but he didn’t have one.
“Hold,” Montgomery said. His voice came through the speaker a minute later. “Got her signal. You’ll receive a text message with her cell location. That message will update if her cell phone moves, but you need to get to her quickly.”
“I’m on it. Do I want to know how you got these coordinates?”
“No. Can you live with that?”
“No problem.” He’d crossed a line or two in his time in the Army and as a cop, neither of which he had admitted to his boss. For Sedona, he’d happily cross any line.
“Good. Elliott and I will back you up. Do not engage before we arrive, Sims. If you do, you and I will have a long discussion about following orders, and you’ll find yourself with a reprimand in your file. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” But he’d do whatever was necessary to find and rescue Sedona.
“Sims.” David sounded suspicious.
Cam’s lips curved as he ended the call. David had good reason to be suspicious. Cam didn’t always follow orders.
He ran from the back of the station to his personal SUV and cranked the engine. Cam prayed David’s contact had come through.
A small blip of concern crossed his mind when he thought about someone unknown to him having his personal cell number. These days, however, it was only a matter of time before the information was for sale on some black site.
Cam called up his text messages, and there it was.
A text from an anonymous source. Since the sender was so well concealed and the information uncovered so fast, he figured Fortress Security was the anonymous source.
As long as he found Sedona, Cam could live with breaking the law in return for getting her location and freeing her.
He tapped the coordinates into his navigation program and drove away from the building housing the Morgan County, Tennessee Sheriff’s Department. Cam hung a right, turned on his lights and sirens, and raced from Maple Valley.
In minutes, he drove through wide-open countryside toward the mountains located two hours away if he traveled at the speed limit. He wasn’t. No one and nothing would keep him from getting to Sedona.
Anger simmered in his bloodstream. He should have stopped by the school as he’d planned to do and checked on her. She wouldn’t be in danger if he had. Granted, he didn’t have all the details, but Sedona had been taken about the time he would have arrived at the elementary school.
Cam gripped the steering wheel tighter. This couldn’t happen again. No more second-guessing himself, either. He had to nail down what their relationship was. If he had done it sooner, there would have been no question about his right to stop and see her for a few minutes on his patrol shift.
He coaxed a little more speed from the souped-up engine and concentrated on threading through traffic until he was 50 miles from Silverwood Forest. The traffic thinned out until Cam was the only driver on the highway. Good. Now he wouldn’t have to worry as much about civilians on the road.
His cell phone rang. Cam tapped the hands-free device on his dashboard screen. “Yeah, Sims.”
His boss told him where he and Elliot had parked. “We’ll see you in a few minutes. Kill your lights and siren.”
Although he wanted to run hot all the way so Sedona knew help was coming, Cam obeyed his boss. He liked David Montgomery, even if he had been a SEAL instead of Delta Force.
He sped along the narrow, winding mountain road, praying he didn’t run into one of the many hazards possible in the Silverwood Forest. His gut told him every second that separated him from Sedona was a second too long.
Using his combat-driving skills learned in the Sandbox while deployed with his unit, Cam kept his speed a steady 20 miles over the speed limit. Didn’t want civilians in Morgan County to know he broke the laws he harped on them about every day.
Five minutes later, he skidded to a stop, twisted in the driver’s seat to look out his back window and guided the SUV deep into tree cover. A moment later, his boss and a fellow deputy emerged from the shadows.
Cam turned off the engine, grabbed his Go bag, and exited the vehicle. “Anything new since you arrived?”
David shook his head. “All I can tell you is that the phone hasn’t moved.”
But that didn’t mean Sedona was with her phone. The possibility she and her phone were separated threatened to punch a hole through his self-control. He beat it into submission. Barely.
“Gear up,” Elliot murmured. “We don’t know what’s going on, but it’s a given that whoever took Sedona didn’t have good motives.”
Cam set down his bag, quickly pulled out gear, and tugged it on. When he finished, David dropped a small object into the palm of his hand. “What’s this?”
“Communication device. Put it in your ear. To make this operation work, we’ll have to split up.” Elliot turned to David, his brother. “Right?”
He nodded. “Tap your earpiece,” David said and reached up to do the same with his device, as did Elliot. “We’re ready, Zane.”
Seconds later, a male voice came through the small device in Cam’s ear. “No change in the phone’s location. For the moment, I have access to a satellite feed. Don’t ask whose I’m borrowing.”
“Copy.” David glanced at his phone’s screen. “You’re on speaker with Cam Sims and Elliot. What are you seeing?” He motioned to the others to follow him.
“Three heat signatures. They’ve split up to look for Sedona.”
Cam broke in. “Do you see her heat signature?”
After a momentary pause, Zane said, “I think so. What I don’t understand is why they don’t see her.”
“What do you mean?” Elliot asked.
“About fifteen minutes ago, two of the three kidnappers were in the same area as Sedona. They should have seen her, but they didn’t.”
Thank God they hadn’t. Cam frowned. “She must have found a great place to hide.” Perhaps a large, hollowed-out tree trunk or a fallen log. Maybe rocks out in the open.
“Get moving,” Zane snapped after several minutes of silence. “The three kidnappers are returning to the place where Sedona is hiding.”
David picked up speed, phone in one hand, a Sig Sauer in the other. A quarter of a mile out, he used a hand signal to tell Elliot and Cam to split up and surround the area where Sedona’s signal originated.
Veering off to the right, Cam placed his feet carefully to avoid announcing his approach to the kidnappers.
His brows knitted. Who were these people and what did they want with Sedona?
For goodness’ sake, she taught kindergartners every day.
He couldn’t think of a woman less likely to be involved with criminals than Sedona Hart.
Sedona must have seen or heard something that she shouldn’t have. No other explanation made sense.
The low rumble of men’s voices told Cam he was close to the target coordinates. He closed in on the men, staying in the deepest shadows as he crouched in the darkness and listened to three men argue while he visually looked for Sedona.
The big, muscle-bound man folded his arms across his chest and scowled at the other two men. “You lost her? I practically gave her to you on a silver platter, and you let her escape. The boss will not be happy about this.”
“Then he ought to be out here helping us look for her. It’s pitch black out here. We can’t see our hands in front of our faces without a powerful flashlight turned on.”
Cam looked down at his hands, perfectly visible in the moonlight, and looked back at the skinny guy. Someone wanted to pass the blame to anyone other than himself. He’d known quite a few guys in the military who had the same habit.
His lips curled. Cam had kept his distance from them. The last thing he’d needed then, or now, was someone who didn’t complete his job and pawned off the blame on someone else.
He slid his phone into his pocket, half-listening to the three men in the small clearing argue between themselves while he scanned for Sedona’s hiding place.
When he didn’t spot her right away, his gut tightened into a knot. What if she had escaped again from the three kidnappers, this time without her phone? Once she left this forest, he wouldn’t have a clue where to look for her.
His jaw tightened. That couldn’t happen. He had to find her before she escaped the forest. Cam didn’t know if these three men were the only ones involved in taking Sedona from her school. Staying in the deepest shadows, Cam moved closer to the men and crouched behind a broad tree trunk.
“I don’t care what you thought,” Muscle Man snapped. “So what if she heard the boss’ name? If you had grabbed her like he ordered you to do, it wouldn’t have been your problem,” Muscle Man snapped as he shoved one thug aside, beginning to walk away.
Big Guy scowled. “Are you going to help?”
“Not my problem. I didn’t lose her.” Muscle Man walked from the clearing, blending into the shadows within seconds with his black clothes and running shoes.
Through the earpiece, Cam heard David say, “Elliot.”
“On it.”
The other two continued to argue until David sighed. “They’re taking too long to decide what to do next. Let’s help them with that. You ready?”
“Yeah. Which one do you want?”
“Muscle guy is yours. I’ll take Skinny Boy.”
He rolled his eyes. “Should have known,” he murmured.
“Hey, if you want to switch, I’m good with it. Just thought you’d want the man who grabbed your woman and carried her off. We still don’t know what these men did to her.”
Cam’s fist tightened around the handgrip of his Sig. Didn’t need reminding of that, not if he wanted to do his job the right way instead of the way he wanted to do it at that moment. “Nope. Big Guy is mine.”
“On my count. Do not move early, Sims.”
He scowled. Really? Come on. He wasn’t a rookie.
David started the countdown.
When the boss reached one, Cam surged closer to the clearing, weapon aimed straight at Big Guy’s heart. One wrong move, and Big Guy would no longer be a problem for Sedona or Cam. “Police! Freeze!”
David emerged from the shadows to step to the edge of the clearing, his weapon aimed at Skinny Dude.
Skinny gave a slow grin. His eyes, though, were two cold orbs. This man wouldn’t think twice about pulling the trigger. Big Guy stood frozen in place as though he’d turned into a block of ice.
“Turn around slowly,” Cam ordered. He watched carefully in case Big Guy made a run for it or pulled out a weapon.
Of the two, he figured the latter was more likely.
The man was loaded down with weapons, like the Montgomery brothers.
And himself, Cam admitted. If he’d been pulled over by a fellow officer, he’d have had a hard time explaining the abundance of weapons unless he could flash his badge.
Skinny Boy slowly turned toward Cam and smirked. “Well, look who we have here. The boyfriend, Cameron Sims.”
He stilled. “Who are you?”
“Doesn’t matter. But your being here proves that you care, doesn’t it?”
Yeah, he cared a lot, but he was also a cop. He was bound by his oath to protect the public. Sedona was a citizen of Morgan County. Of course he’d be here.
“What do you want with Sedona and me?” Big Guy’s comment proved that someone wanted both of them.
But why? That was the question. Had his past come back to bite him, or had the source of trouble come from Sedona’s past?
Either way, they both needed to be on their guard because someone wanted to take them down.