with Tinker.
Our daughter informed me of that fact a little while ago. She’s frightened, Mik. Get us out of here, please. I’m okay, but I hate that our babies are afraid. These are not very nice men.
That’s an understatement, Mik said. Hang tight. Keep the link open. As soon as Anton gets here, we’ll fill you both in on what’s going to happen.
Okay. We’ll be fine. I mean, what can possibly go wrong? Anton’s got a plan.
Mik, AJ, Tinker, and Luc sat around the big oak table in the dining room and looked over the packet of materials that had been left in the SUV out in front. Nick had discovered the package shortly before the phone call, when he’d left to pick up the Montana pack at the airport.
The silence in the room was unnerving as they studied the maps and diagrams describing the president’s route for the evening. Paperwork and badges giving them status as official security with top-level clearances, a complete schematic of the huge auditorium and every step the president would make, as well as a tightly defined timetable that was all spelled out were also included in the package.
All culminating in the death of the president.
Mik raised his head and looked at the others. “Anyone else notice what’s missing here?”
AJ chuckled. “You mean the lack of an escape plan for after the killing? Maybe they just forgot.”
“Look.” Tinker slapped his big hands down on the table. “We have contact. We can find our women, get to them before anyone hurts them. Kill the bastards that kidnapped them. We can save them now, before we go through with this fucking charade.”
Luc glanced up at Tinker. “You’re right, Tink. We could, but we’d only be getting the worker bees. We wouldn’t be getting the ones at the top. The ones who planned this. Lisa and Tala understand. Neither one of them wants out yet. The minute they feel as if they’re in danger, we pull them out, but not yet. Not if we want to get these bastards.”
Tinker sat quietly, but he was trembling with rage and frustration as he stared at the scattered papers spread across the dining room table. “She’s so fucking brave,” he said. His voice was hardly above a whisper. “Lisa keeps checking in with me, telling me not to worry. She’s calm, she’s got it all together.” He raised his head and looked directlyat Mik. “Our women are trusting us to save them. If anything goes wrong, if Lisa or our baby gets hurt, I …” He shook his head and pushed his chair away from the table. Walked across the room and stared out the front window.
The clear skies of the morning had given away to low, dark, ominous-looking clouds. Rain was forecast for later tonight, but now, with the barometer dropping as the storm moved on shore, the pressure change was affecting all of them, making it harder to concentrate. Increasing the tension in what was already a tense situation.
Mik stood up and followed Tinker, stopped just behind him and hung his arm over Tink’s broad shoulders. “Lisa and Tala come from tough stock. They’re survivors. I have to believe they’ll be all right, that our babies will be all right. Tink, you can’t let yourself go anywhere else. Not if you’re going to be there for your mate, for your daughter.”
Tinker shook his head. “I’m just so fucking tired of this, Mik. So tired. I want to live with my woman, raise our babies, have a normal life without constantly worrying about some bastard trying to hurt us. Lisa deserves better. We all do.”
“I agree.” Mik leaned against the wall beside the window and folded his arms across his chest. “Which is why we have to do more than just rescue them. We have to find out who’s behind this and take them down. I don’t care who it is, how high up they might be, even if it’s military or the government, but whoever they are, we need them gone. We go after the girls now … yeah, we can get them out, no problem. You know that, I know that, so do they. But what then?
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