AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My mind drifts to Luke and his handsome face. His dark eyes twinkling with mischief when he’s being flirty. The love that we’ve shared is what I want to focus on, in my last moments. A love that I thought only existed in fairytales, but I found in real life, in him. I begin to imagine what should have been. I should be Mrs. Luke Robertson right now. I should be on my honeymoon, making love to my husband for hours. I’m over being sad at a loss that hasn’t happened yet. I’m angry, so very angry. I have to find some way to get Shelby and me out of this situation, to keep us alive. I can’t give up. Luke wouldn’t give up on me, and I can’t give up on him. I must fight to stay alive, for him. It’s what he’d want me to do.
LUKE
My cell phone ringing, pulls me from a restless sleep, filled with nightmares of Marley in danger with no way for me to get to her in time. I snatch the phone off my night stand and answer without looking at the caller ID. At this point, I don’t care who’s calling unless it’s someone telling me they have Marley and Shelby safe and secure.
“Robertson,” I grumble into the phone. Leaning on my elbow, I swipe my face with my other hand to clear the sleep from my eyes.
“Luke, it’s Jim,” Agent Morris says. I sit up straighter. “I’m sorry about the late hour, but I knew you’d want to know the minute we had any information.”
“What is it? Have you found them?” My heart is pounding in fear and anticipation. His next words could bring elation or utter destruction.
“We’ve heard from our informant,” Jim answers. “He has confirmation the Brotherhood is responsible for Marley and Shelby’s abduction, but they don’t trust him enough to disclose the women’s location.” I drop my head in defeat. The hope that had begun to grow at his first words fades rapidly. We are still inthe same place we were before. The Brotherhood has taken my woman, but we don’t know where they’re holding her. “He says the group is planning something big, though. He’s been told to be at the Stars and Stripes celebration. He thinks this is where they’re going to make their strike.”
“We need to get there first,” I say as plans begin to form in my mind. “We need to establish a perimeter, set up cameras with 24/7 real time monitoring, have bomb sniffing dogs on hand.”
“Luke stop!” Agent Morris calls over the line. I’m already texting Bo to gather everyone in the conference room at the office. They’ve all been staying here at the house as we’ve worked late into the night every night, trying to find them. I only came up to bed when Rosco had kept me from falling out of my chair for the third time. I’d been pushing four days without sleep. I glance at my watch, seeing I’d managed to get four hours. Surprisingly I felt like I’d slept many more hours than that. Hearing this news has me wide awake and ready to take on the Brotherhood to get my woman back home, in my arms, where she belongs.
“Luke I can’t authorize any of that,” Agent Morris reminds me. “I’ll have to secure warrants, coordinate with the local police, city officials, and those in charge of the event’s security. We can’t just run in there with guns blazing as much as we might want to.” I understand where Jim is coming from, but I’m not going to blindly accept it.
“I’m…signal…breaking u-up,” I stutter with pauses, hoping he believes I’ve lost signal. I’ll never own up to having heard and understood what he just said. I end the call and immediately call Rosco.
“What’s up brother?” Rosco answers. “Bo said you need us ASAP?”
“Yes, have everyone get started on pulling up maps of the Pier where the Stars and Stripes celebration will take place. We need to hack into security cameras in the area and find out who’s incharge of security for the event. I know local PD will be involved, so I’ll reach out to Atwood to see what he can tell us.”
“We’ll get right on it,” Rosco assures me. “What’s brought this on? Have you gotten new intel?”
“Morris called to report their informant has confirmation the Brotherhood has Marley and Shelby, but he doesn’t know where. He’s been told to be at the Stars and Stripes event. He believes this is where they are planning to produce some havoc, likely in the form of a bombing.” I pause as my throat tightens with emotion, thinking about how frightened Marley must be. “We need to be set up well before the event and stay diligent in surveillance to catch them with the women before they have an opportunity to put their plan in motion.”
“We’re on it,” Rosco declares.
“I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I end the call as I transfer to my chair. My phone is ringing, but I ignore it when I see it’s Jim calling back. Wheeling into the bathroom, I take care of nature then transfer into my shower chair and bathe quickly. Seeing Marley’s shampoo and body wash on the shelf pains me. I open the bottle, putting a little on my hands, rubbing them together, breathing in the coconut fragrance. My eyes burn from the emotions that hit me as the scent brings back so many memories of her. I hang my head as the hot water cascades over me, not doing a damn thing to relax my tense muscles. Only having her here with me again will ease the fear and heartache I’m feeling.
I quickly dry off with a towel and dress before heading out to join my brothers in preparation to stake out the Pier so we can rescue Marley and Shelby before the Brotherhood attempts to blow them up along with everyone attending the patriotic event. We only have a few days left until the Fourth. We have to put an end to this before the terrorists have an opportunity to put the devices on the women.
I arrive at the office to find everyone gathered around the conference room table. “About time you showed up,” Bocomplains as I take my place in front of my laptop. I chose to ignore him, instead focusing on the information they’ve managed to garner in my absence.
“What do you have for me?” I ask, looking at each man in turn, hoping against hope they’ve gotten everything we need to find these assholes today.
“I’ve sent you maps of the area,” Dalton informs me. I click on his email and begin scrolling through, making mental notes of possible targets the terrorists would use. “I highlighted the areas where it’s expected to have the greatest numbers of people gathered to watch the festivities. I have confirmation from a member of the security company handling this event. The President will be in attendance. I believe the Brotherhood will target the President. If they can pull this off, it will boost their position and their cause with sympathizers. There are two possible courses of action they might take. One, they target the highlighted areas for the most damage, but security will be strictest in the high traffic areas. So they might not want to take the chance on getting caught or stopped. The other possibility is they set off several blasts on the perimeter, causing the most chaos to instill fear as well as kill or injury as many people as possible. Either way, it isn’t going to be good.”
“Have we hacked into the traffic cameras?” I ask thinking of the next steps we’ll need to take to figure all of this out. I glance at Kelvin since he’s the best at this type of thing.
Kelvin is banging away on one of his three computers he has set up. He side-eyes me with a grin of his face. “Of course, I’m in. Don’t be doubting my skills.” I roll my eyes, but the man is correct. He’s more than above average when it comes to hacking into systems. I knew he could do it. I just needed confirmation it had already been done.
“I don’t doubt them,” I assure him. “But I do know it can sometimes be…tricky, shall we say. I was just making sure you were already in.” Kelvin nods absently as he continues to click away on first one laptop then another. I turn my attention back to my computer and begin formulating a plan of action.
A few hours later, the conference room phone rings, pulling me from my work. I stretch my aching back. Enos is already on his feet, heading for the phone. After a brief conversation, he heads out down the hall, saying he’ll be right back. I’m popping my neck when I hear voices drifting down the hall and coming closer. Moments later, Enos returns leading a very pissed off Agent Morris.
“Luke.” Agent Morris nods, making eye contact before dropping into a chair at the table. “Looks like you’ve all been busy. I’ve been calling, asking to speak with you, but Erik said you couldn’t come to the phone. Care to tell me why?”
“No, I don’t,” I answer before turning back to my computer, dismissing him. I know why he’s here, and I’m not particularly in the mood to argue with him over the legality of our activities in my effort to find Marley and Shelby. Morris sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose as if he’s trying to keep from killing me outright.
“I’m not here to shut you down.” My gaze shoots to meet his. “I want to help, Luke. I know how much Marley means to you, and due to problems within my department in the past, you couldn’t trust us to protect her.” His words cut me deep. Pointing out my failure to protect her. “I understand why you felt that way, and it is justified. I’ve found evidence we have a mole in the office.” My eyes widen at his confession. I can’t believe he’s just admitted his department is compromised. Morris drops his head in shame. “I should have picked up on it sooner, but I had other cases to deal with after Marley’s first abduction. I didn’t connect all the dots until today.”
“What are you talking about, Morris?” I demand sick of his vague explanation. “Just spit it out!”
“It bothered me from the beginning how the Brotherhood knew so much about Marley,” he begins, “and how they were ableto manipulate her accounts and information so easily. All preliminary intelligence said they weren’t that technologically advanced. Then when she was taken the other day, I wondered how they’d known she would be at the bar?”
