Tactical Rescue

It was Zack. She nearly fell out of the van into his arms. Zack’s free hand grabbed her waist, just long enough to help her onto the ground. But then, before letting go, he whispered in her ear, “I need you to trust me and do whatever I say, without question.”

“What?”

But Zack stepped back. His head tilted in her direction. “You! Get down! Now!”

Zack was shouting at her. Not at the men who’d just abducted her. She hesitated. Her feet weren’t two steps away from the kidnappers’ van. Thick, endless forest spread out around her on every side. And Zack just expected her to drop to the ground instead of running?

Dmitry climbed out the driver’s-side door. Ivan stumbled across the back of the van toward them. Zack’s eyes cut sideways at Rebecca.

“Do it!” Zack said. “Trust me! Just get down.”

Her head shook. “But—”

Ivan’s bulk filled the van’s back door. With one large, steady hand he aimed his gun at Zack’s face and barked something in a foreign language. Zack didn’t move a muscle. Dmitry walked around the side of the van, slowly.

“She’s coming with us.” Dmitry trained his gun on Zack’s face.

Zack paused a long moment, without moving or speaking, as if he didn’t even see the guns or the men behind them. Then Zack shrugged and shook his head.

“She? You mean, this one?” Zack pointed one finger at Rebecca, shook his head and tapped his chest in a slow, exaggerated motion. “No, no. She’s coming with me.”

Ivan laughed. It was an ugly sound bordering on a snarl. His finger hovered on the trigger. “No, I kill you. She comes with me.”

Rebecca stood, with broken glass under her boots and legs tensed to spring. Zack was so calm and so in control, it was as if he was haggling over the price of meat instead of fighting for her life. Something within her tugged at the corner of her heart, reminding her of the sweet, sensitive man who she’d once trusted enough to spar with. She’d trusted Zack with her life back then. He was the first man she’d ever really trusted.

But how could she trust him now?

He’d kept secrets from her. He hadn’t told her who he was. Her life was in danger and he was being so casual about it, he was almost cold. Zack hadn’t just transformed his body to look like the jocks who’d once made them both feel worthless. Now he sounded just like them, too.

Zack shrugged again, rolling his shoulders up and down in a slow rise and fall that seemed to accentuate every curve of his muscular chest.

“This one, she’s a bit difficult. Clumsy, you know, and a chatterbox.” He made a mouth with his fingers and flapped it up and down in the same dismissive “talking” gesture Seth had once used to hurt and belittle her. “But I promised my boss I’d take her somewhere. You understand how this works. You have a job to do. I have a job to do. Maybe we can figure something out. How much is your boss paying you for her?”

The question hung in the air. Ivan and Dmitry glanced at each other. Neither answered. And now, Rebecca was too angry to even let the fear she was feeling even take hold. Zack didn’t look at her. One of Zack’s hands still held the gun firmly in its grip. The other was just inches away from it. She used to feel so safe in his arms. She didn’t doubt either the speed or aim he’d be able to pull the trigger with. But now, standing next to him, she felt anything but safe. She felt like that awkward, clumsy female in the martial arts class nobody wanted to get stuck with.

No, worse than that. She felt like a worthless scrap of meat in a dogfight.

“Ivan, is it?” Zack nodded to the man’s tattoo on the man’s neck. His voice rose. “You don’t want to take this woman. She’s a bad assignment. Cut your losses and move on. It’s not worth the trouble.”

Ivan snapped something at Dmitry. Dmitry shouted back. In an instant, both men were arguing so loudly they were almost bellowing.

Zack tilted his head and leaned toward Rebecca. “Trust me, okay? Do whatever I say to do. Without question.”

“No bribe!” Ivan shouted in English. “No money. No deal. No bribe. We’re taking her now.” He pointed one finger at Rebecca. “You. Girlie. Hands up. Come here, now.”

She nearly laughed. Did these men not see the gun Zack had trained at their heads? True, it was two guns against one, but it was not as if Zack was about to let them drive off with her.

“Okay, okay.” Zack lowered his gun and forced an artificial chuckle from this throat.

What? she nearly screamed inside her own head.

Ivan’s snarl turned into a smirk. “You’re just going to give us the girl?”

Zack shrugged. “What can I say? Like I said, she is clumsy. She will take two steps, trip over her own feet and fall down.”

Ivan snapped something to Dmitry.

“No, no, don’t shoot me, Dmitry!” Zack raised his hands. “You shoot me. I shoot you. Ivan here gets the girl and the money.”

There was a long pause. Wind brushed the trees. Ivan shifted his feet. Zack stood firm on the pavement.

Zack turned to Rebecca. “Go around to the passenger’s-side door. I’ll stay here with this man and we’ll work things out.”

Her head shook. Tears were forming in her eyes. “If I get into their van, they’ll kill me.”

Firm gray eyes cut at Rebecca. “Passenger side. Go.”

* * *

Zack could feel his heart beating in his chest, slow and steady.

He could sense Rebecca beside him without even looking her way. He knew how she was standing and how her limbs were moving. He knew exactly how much space was between their two bodies. He could feel the fear rolling off her shoulders like waves. He could hear the ragged, desperate sound of her breathing and wished there was a way he could still it.

Trust me, Becs. Please. I know what I’m doing. I know who these men are, how they think and how to keep you safe. Just walk around to the passenger side of the van, take two steps and hit the ground.

What were two members of Black Talon, a violent Eastern European crime syndicate, even doing in Canada? There’d been rumors recently of an internal power struggle within Black Talon. Members killing other members for control of the syndicate. What was more worrying was that both Canadian intelligence and weapons kept turning up in the hands of one faction. His special ops unit had recently been tasked with trying to determine, without any real leads, where the leak was coming from. It was possible these two men were former members who’d gotten ahold of forged immigration documents from the same source, come to North America and turned mercenaries for hire. But the hackles on the back of his neck, and the way they’d responded to his questions about their boss, made him suspect they were the real deal.

Did they suspect he was Canadian military? He’d tried to throw them off by calling them “Dmitry” and “Ivan” as if he thought the tattoos were the men’s real names, as opposed to the names of their first confirmed kills.

All Zack was waiting for now was for Rebecca to get herself out of harm’s way. Then he could rush Ivan and safely disarm him. After that he’d take out Dmitry.

But Rebecca wasn’t moving. Had she not understood his signal? Did his directions confuse her? True, they hadn’t seen each other in years. But they used to be so tight it was as though they could read each other’s thoughts. The soldier in Zack told him that when the hostage one was rescuing became a liability, it was important to focus on the key mission objective above all else.

Yet something in his heart was stopping him from thinking of Rebecca as a mere “hostage” or “objective.” Rebecca was different. Somehow. Keeping her safe mattered to him. But he didn’t have time to stand around asking himself how or why. If she didn’t move soon, he’d have no choice but to treat her like any other uncooperative hostage he was trying to rescue, which was something he really didn’t want to have to do.

Aw, come on, Rebecca! Until you move I won’t be able to get us out of this!

Zack tilted his head toward Rebecca but kept his eyes trained on the gunmen.

“Hurry up,” he hissed.

Ivan raised an eyebrow.

Lord, he prayed, help her understand. I can’t keep stalling these men forever.

“Look, please, don’t make this any harder than it needs to be,” Zack said, sharply. “You think I don’t remember how clumsy you were? Like I said, you’d take two steps onto the martial arts mats, trip and you would wipe out on your face. Just go around to the side of the van and get out of my way. Now! You don’t want them to tie you up or drag you off kicking and screaming, now do ya?”

Rebecca spun on her heels—

Thank You, God!

She sprinted hard into the woods.

No!

Ivan swore and fired after her. Dmitry charged into the trees.

No. No. No. No. No.

This is exactly the kind of situation Zack had wanted to avoid! Rebecca was now running off wildly with no direction or focus with an experienced killer on her heels, putting her own life in even worse danger. Why hadn’t she just listened?

Ivan’s weapon swung toward Zack. But Zack wasn’t about to let him get off another shot. Zack charged, head down, his full strength barreling into the thug like a freight train. Ivan’s body smacked against the pavement. The gun flew from his hand.

Zack stood over him and grabbed him by the shirt collar. “Why is the Black Talon in Canada? How did you get into the country? Who’s been supplying you with Canadian weapons? What do you want with Rebecca Miles?”

“No English.” The criminal spat in his face.

A gun blast sounded from the trees to his left.

Rebecca.

Dmitry was still hunting her.

Zack’s jaw clenched. If he let Ivan get away he might never get an answer. But if he didn’t, Rebecca might die. He leveled one decisive blow at the side Ivan’s head, hard enough to keep him from following. Then Zack grabbed the man’s gun and charged into the woods. His feet pelted quickly through the trees. His ears strained for noise to guide him.

Zack had always been a tracker. Before he’d been a soldier he’d hunted game, both large and small, in the Canadian woods. As a bodyguard one summer, he’d found and returned the runaway rich kid he’d been hired to protect. But while his body moved almost silently, his heart pounded so loudly in his ears, it threatened to block out the world around him. Rebecca hadn’t taken him seriously. She hadn’t respected him. She hadn’t seen the man he’d become. A man finally worthy of being respected and cared for by a woman like her. She must still think of him as the emotionally and physically weak boy he used to be. And now her life was in danger because of it.

Another gun blast.

Then Dmitry’s voice, loud and angry. “Come out now!”

Zack crept toward the sound. He could see Dmitry between the trees. The criminal was standing in a clearing. But where was Rebecca? Dmitry swung his weapon around in a circle and fired wildly into the underbrush. Bullets tore through the trees.

“You! Out! Now!” Dmitry’s gun spun wildly from one direction to another. “Or I’ll hurt you!”

Zack held in his breath as bullets flew past him, exploding in the underbrush. Dmitry reached to reload.

Rebecca leaped from the trees.

FOUR

Zack watched in amazement as Rebecca launched herself at Dmitry, landing hard on the criminal’s back. The gun flew from Dmitry’s hand and disappeared into the undergrowth. Rebecca clung to his back, swinging at his head and scratching like a wildcat. So, she’d been hiding up a tree waiting for a member of Black Talon to run out of bullets? Rebecca might not be the easiest target he’d ever extracted from danger, but the woman had serious guts.

Zack burst through the tree line and started running. Dmitry tossed Rebecca to the ground. She leaped up and charged right back at the burly man, even as his fist flew at her. She fell back. But only for a moment. She charged again.

“Rebecca, wait!” Zack threw the strength of his bulk in between Rebecca and the professional killer. Dmitry swung toward Zack. Zack blocked the blow and leveled a decisive punch at the man’s jaw. Rebecca took off running through the woods again.

You’ve got to be kidding me!

The Black Talon killer scrambled to his feet and took off running back toward the road. Rebecca and Dmitry had disappeared through the trees in opposite directions.

Okay, now what? Zack glanced up to the sky, but even before a prayer could leave his lips, he knew exactly which way to run.

Zack took off after Rebecca. He gave up on stealth and went for speed. She was smaller, lither and better able to weave through the dense underbrush. He felt like a rhinoceros crashing after her. But she would never be able to beat the sheer strength of the adrenaline that surged in his veins. He caught up to her, slowly and surely. Then for a moment they were pacing each other, his feet just a few steps behind hers.

Zack’s hand reached out and brushed her shoulder, even as he dreaded the moment he was going to have to grab her and force her to stop. “Rebecca.” He panted. “Please.”

She stopped running. So did he. They stood there together, face-to-face in the forest, catching their breath. Her hands grabbed both of her knees, as her head swung down between her legs for a moment, panting. Then she swung her head back up, and he watched as dark hair cascaded around her shoulders, dancing like grass in the wind. His mouth went dry.

Rebecca’s hands rose up in front of her face in two small fists. He watched as her legs moved into the perfect lines of a fighter’s stance. Something inside his stomach lurched. He watched her take the pose he’d seen her take so many times before, back on the mats when they were so much younger and knew each other so much better. His heart remembered how there’d always been a slight smile on her lips and a twinkle in her eyes as she challenged him to a fight. Now, the look in her eyes was deadly serious and the curl of her lip almost trembled.

His heart sank down to the bottom of his chest. He leaned back against a tree, suddenly feeling all the fight leave his body.

“Aw, come on, Becs. Don’t look at me like that. I know this situation is crazy, and I can’t begin to imagine what’s going through your head right now, seeing me again like this after all these years. But I promise you, I’m on your side here. And no matter what, I’d never hurt you. Ever.” He ran one hand through his hair, suddenly conscious of all the white that had crept into it over the years. Then he glanced down at his chest and arms, feeling almost self-conscious about the physique he’d worked so hard to build. “I’m still the same guy you used to spar and joke around with back when we were younger. Only a whole lot older and in slightly different packaging.”

As he watched, something softened in the lines of her face. Her shoulders relaxed slightly. But still her hands didn’t drop.

“I’m not going anywhere with those men,” she said.

“Of course you’re not!” He chuckled without even meaning to at how ludicrous a thought that even was. Then he winced, as fire flashed in the depths of her eyes. She’d always hated being laughed at.

“You told me to go with them.” She leveled the words at him like blows.

“No, I didn’t! I told you to go around to the side of the van and fall flat on your face.”

“You never told me to fall down. You just kept making stupid, Seth-like comments about how clumsy I was and that I was likely to fall down—”

“Because I was signaling to you that I needed you out of the line of fire. I needed you to get around the van, drop to the ground, so I could take them out without risking you getting shot. But I could hardly telegraph my plans in front of them. So I was trusting that you’d get what I was saying.” His voice turned hoarse in his throat. “How could you not get that? What? Did you think I was just randomly insulting you, while your life was in danger, like some arrogant jerk?”

She raised her hands to her face. Her fingers pressed into the corners of her eyes, like she was fighting back tears. Oh, wow. She had. She’d been terrified, and in danger, and for some reason thought he was actually taking potshots at her. His head shook.

What happened, Rebecca? What happened to you? What happened to us?

In all the years she’d lived as a smiling face in his footlocker and as a memory at the corner of his mind, he’d focused on the good times. The mornings they’d gone jogging around the base together before anyone else was awake. The infectious laugh that would slip through her lips when he managed to surprise her. The way her fingers would brush against his arm.

But now, that final time he’d seen her, that painful moment he’d tried to forget, filled his mind in blaring sound and color. How she’d stood, just inside the shelter of the school archway, while the rain poured down around him. Smudgy lines of makeup making her eyes look even bigger. Her hair twisted around her head like something off a movie screen. And wearing some sparkling, extraordinary getup that had blown his mind and made him forget how words worked.

What are you doing here? Her eyes had narrowed. You missed me getting the trophy.

She’d been angry. Hurt. He hadn’t known why.

He’d looked down at his feet. I just enlisted.

An engine rumbled in the distance. The van was leaving. Rebecca’s fingers were still hiding her face.

His soldier’s mind reminded him that she was the stepsister of a man who’d stolen government secrets. The fact that Black Talon mercenaries had come after her and Seth had blown up the road to her property meant she was somehow involved, whether she knew it or not. And his own CO had suggested he simply take her to Timmins and let the police handle it. Yet, for one brief moment, all his heart could see was his former best friend—frightened, overwhelmed and desperately needing someone to wrap their arms around her, pull her into their chest and hold her tightly.

Even if right now that person couldn’t be him.

He stepped forward and reached for her hands. “I’m sorry. A long time ago, we had such an amazing connection. It was like we could read each other’s minds. It was wrong of me to just assume you’d get what I was saying back there or what I was asking you to do.”

She let him peel her hands away from her face. Her eyes were dark and brimming with questions.

“You didn’t even tell me it was you,” she said.

I was hoping you’d recognized me. I was hoping you’d know.

Maybe he’d even been hoping on some level that she’d never forgotten him just like he’d never forgotten her.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. Her fingers fluttered in his. But she didn’t pull away. “My real name is Zack Keats. I dropped the ‘Biggs’ when I enlisted. Keats was my mother’s maiden name, my middle name and the last name of the uncle and aunt who raised me. I was the last of their family tree. I am a sergeant with the Canadian Armed Forces. Trust me, this is hardly the way I wanted this reunion to go and there’s so much I want to tell you that I can’t. But ask me any question you want, and I promise that even if I can’t give you an answer, I will not lie to you.”

She stepped back and pulled her hands away. Then she crossed her arms, leveled a steady, unflinching gaze at him and asked him the one question she’d know he’d never be able to answer. The one question he’d spent his whole adult life hoping no civilian would ever ask him:

“Are you with special ops?”

* * *

Zack didn’t answer her. He didn’t need to. The split-second flash of alarm in his eyes was all the confirmation she needed. In a nanosecond, his facade was calm again, expressionless, like that of a man who’d worked very hard at learning how to hide everything he really thought and felt so very deep down inside, so that it never came close to hitting the surface.

“The Canadian Forces special operations are highly classified,” Zack said, almost mechanically.

“I know.” Just how I know that if you are special forces, you won’t be able to tell me. “But would it be okay if I told you a story?”

His eyebrows rose. “Go ahead.”

“When I was a teenager my best friend, Zack, was a total genius. When it came to puzzles and figuring things out, his brain just seemed to work twice as fast as everyone else’s.” She watched as Zack swallowed hard. “My friend Zack told me once that his life’s goal was to join the Canadian special forces. Showed me all this research he’d managed to do about them. He had a binder of it. A literal three-ring binder. He took it that seriously. I never forgot that about him. So, over the years, I kept my ears open for news of the Canadian Forces special ops task force, especially when I was working on projects overseas. I always wondered if he’d made it and if my friend Zack was now one of those brave, unknown people secretly keeping the world safe.”

His eyes were locked on hers, filled with words she knew he wouldn’t be able to say. For a brief moment, the sheer pride she felt swelling inside her blocked out every other question in her mind. No matter how upset and frustrated I am right now, I hope you know just how insanely impressed I am with you, too.

Then she looked away and started walking back toward the direction of the road. He matched her pace.

“Then again,” she added, “he was only eighteen at the time. He’d be in his late thirties now and getting close to forty. And how many people actually grow up to become exactly the man they’d always said they’d be?”

Certainly nobody else I’ve ever known. The forest floor crunched under their feet. Zack pulled his phone from his pocket, frowned, then slid it back.

“How about your stepbrother?” Zack asked. “What did he turn out to be?”

“Seth?” She blinked. Why did Zack want to know about him? He couldn’t still be sore over how bad Seth had treated him. “What about him? He works in computers. We never talk.”

There were handcuffs on Zack’s belt, tucked under his sweatshirt, but still they jangled just a little as he walked.

“I overheard the phone conversation you had in my truck,” she added. “I didn’t set out to eavesdrop, but I’m a videographer and my truck is wired for video and sound. Who were you talking to and why did you tell them you were bringing me in?”

“That was my commanding officer, Major Jeff Lyons. I’d told you I was going to call him. I was just telling him that I was going to escort you to the police station in Timmins.”

“Why does that require handcuffs and a gun?” She shot him a sideways glance. “You made it sound like you were going to drag me there against my will.”

“Those aren’t for you. They’re for in case we run into trouble on our way there. The police want to talk to you about something, and he wanted to make sure I was going to remain professional and not accidentally compromise an active investigation because of our past friendship. I might’ve gotten a little emphatic about it.”

“What kind of open investigation?” she pressed. “Why does the police want to talk to me?”

“Telling you that could compromise the police’s ability to question you.”

“Okay, but is it safe to assume it’s linked to the fact that someone blew up the road?”

“I can’t tell you about that.”

“How about Ivan and Dmitry?”

He ran his hand over the back of his neck in a gesture so familiar it rattled something at the edges of her heart.

“I think it’s safe to assume you’re going to remember the tattoo those men had and look it up online,” he said, carefully. She nodded. “When you do, you’ll find references to a major Eastern European crime syndicate, which translates roughly as ‘Black Talon.’ Basically they steal things, smuggle things, sell things illegally and kill people, and to make matters worse there are warring factions within Black Talon violently fighting for supremacy over the group. You’ll also discover they tattoo themselves with the name of their first confirmed kill. So technically, those two men would be The-Man-Who-Killed-Ivan and The-Man-Who-Killed-Dmitry, but I’ve been mentally calling them Ivan and Dmitry for short, too. But what I don’t know is why two members of Black Talon would be in Canada or why they just tried to kidnap you. I wouldn’t even want to guess. As you probably noticed I tried fishing for information a bit, trying to see if they knew who I was and if they’d been hired for money.”