Page 86 of Hotter than Wildfire

“And if they throw her purse out the window or make her strip?”

“Be hard to find it. It’s embedded in her shoulder.”

There was silence in the van.

“Jesus,” Sam finally said. “You cut her open and placed a chip in her flesh? Man, you’re braver than I am. The only thing I managed to do was seed Nicole’s hard drive.”

A year ago Nicole had stumbled onto a terrorist plot and had been kidnapped together with her sick father. They’d followed Nicole because out of paranoia Sam had put a tiny tracking device in the portable hard disk she kept in her purse.

Otherwise Nicole’s bones would be at the bottom of the bay, still anchored by chains.

“I didn’t cut her open. She had a wound I stitched shut, remember? I just slipped the tracker in. It’s tiny and tissue neutral and it’s thanks to that we’re able to track her, so shut the fuck up. I was planning on removing it later, anyhow.”

When that fucker Montez was six feet underground or in a federal prison.

Harry’s jaw muscles clenched. With Nicole it had come down to a two second margin, where Sam and Mike had been able to pull the trigger first.

Please, Harry prayed. Let me pull that trigger first.

“Mike.” He kept his eyes glued to the display. The Mercedes was tracking steadily west. Montez and van der Boeke had a clear goal. So what the fuck was it?

“Yo.” God, it felt good to hear Mike’s steady bass. He knew that Harry was shaken. Mike didn’t have a woman he loved on the line and could be counted on to stay cool.

Harry didn’t dare take his eyes off the display and the road ahead. “Call the FBI SD Field Office. Number’s 858-565-1255. Ask for Special Agent Aaron Welles by name. Give him a sitrep. I want him where we end up, fast as possible, with the whole cavalry. SWAT, Hostage Rescue, the works.”

“On it.” Mike’s phone bleeped softly as he keyed in the numbers. “Special Agent Aaron Welles, please. It’s urgent.”

While Mike gave a concise report, Harry frowned at the moving dot. Where the fuck were they going? He scrolled up the map, extrapolating a few miles ahead of the Mercedes and saw something he vaguely recognized. Where⁠—?

“Fuck!” he shouted.

Mike stopped talking into his cell. “What?”

“They’re heading for an airfield! Tracy Municipal Airfield. Fuck!” Harry slammed the armrest between the two seats.

“Shit,” Mike breathed.

Sam didn’t say anything but the van leaped forward.

“If she gets up in the air, she’s lost. We’ll never find her. They can push her body out of the plane at any point they want. They’ll fly over desert and forest, she’ll be lost.” He turned around and looked Mike in the eyes. “Tell Aaron to call it in to the airfield. To block every outgoing flight. Tell him to do what it takes, there’s a kidnapping across state lines by a man who’s killed three times.”

Mike simply said, “Hear that? Roger.” He closed his cell. “They’re coming in force, Harry. As fast as they can make it.”

“But we’re the front line,” Harry gritted.

“Yeah.” Mike’s eyes met his in the rear view mirror. “We’re the front line. Tip of the spear. If we don’t stop them, she’s gone.”

They seemed to go off the main roads, over a few bumps in the road, then were off again, racing over unpaved roads.

Lying down in the footwell, all Ellen could see was empty sky. No telephone poles, no street signs, no buildings, nothing. They drove for maybe a quarter of an hour over roads so rough she could hear and even feel rocks pelting against the underside of the car, and could see plumes of the dust they raised outside the window. Finally, they slid back onto asphalt.

The two men upfront weren’t talking. She had no idea what their plans were, except that she would never survive them.

Oh God. How could she have made this mistake? And how could Gerald have been just waiting for her? She’d barely stepped outside Harry’s building, hadn’t even had time to flag a taxi and that blond guy had come running after her. A second later, the big black Mercedes rolled up to where they were.

They must have been waiting in the car right outside the building. But how? How did they know?

However they knew, it was too late to worry about it. Actually, it was way too late to worry about anything. She’d reached a dead end, a place where nothing she could do would influence the outcome. She was in the hands of two clever men, strong men. For just the few seconds in which the blond man had gripped her arm, hard, and pulled her against him, she’d felt tough, hard muscles, the kind Harry had.