“I’ll help my sister,” Jackson said into the shocked silence. No one had expected Dylan to be taken off active duty too. “My hostage rescue team is here and ready.”
“I can’t have a whole team on this mission, but I’ll take you,” President Stratton said to her brother.
“May I request Talon Bainbridge and Lucas Sharpe? They’re two of my most trusted men and they’ve helped Keeneston plenty of times in the past on, um, delicate jobs,” Jackson asked.
“Do you trust them, Greer?” President Stratton asked her.
“I do,” she replied immediately.
President Stratton nodded. “Jackson, you and your team are now under Greer’s command. You do what she says when she says it. Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Now go find and rescue Sebastian. Do whatever it takes to bring him back alive.”
The video link went black and everyone stood quietly for a moment. The aunts were still in a straight line, shoulder to shoulder, while Tammy was still hanging on to Ahmed’s back.
“Congratulations, you two,” Greer said into the silence. “But we have work to do. We’ll celebrate when I get home. Nash,” she said to her cousin Sophie’s husband, “you and Kale do your computer thing and see if you can find Sebastian. There has to be a digital trail somewhere. Jackson, get Talon and Lucas ready to go. Mo, can we borrow your plane when we have a location?”
“I’ll have them ready it now,” Mo said, taking out his phone.
“Greer,” Jackson said, taking her attention away from issuing orders. “I have to ask. Is Sebastian even worth saving? He isn’t a good man.”
“It doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t,” Greer said, not liking the anger she felt toward her brother for pointing out the exact thing she’d thought before. She’d deal with that strange reaction later. Freaking Sebastian and his freaking kiss. It messed everything up. “It’s my job.”
“But it’s not all of our jobs. I volunteered not for Sebastian, but for you. I’m your brother and I refuse to let you go out there alone. If he’s not worth it . . .” Jackson told her.
Greer put her hand on his arm and smiled up at him. “I won’t let him die just because we don’t get along.” Well, at least their lips had gotten along really well.“Jackson,” Abby said as she joined them with Dylan by her side. “Sebastian is a great man. Greer knows what to do. She needs to save him.”
“I agree. He’s a good friend. Greer knows what to do. Let her do her thing,” Dylan added.
Jackson shook his head at Dylan. “How can you say that? He slept with your wife?”
Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “Not cool, Jackson. I know what happened before she and I were together. I slept with other women too. I also know there were no feelings involved, and he’s been nothing but supportive of our marriage. Can you say you’ve never slept with the same woman one of the rest of us slept with?”
Jackson blushed. “You know we’ve slept with the same people on occasion. It’s too small a town not to at some point.”
“Then how is this different?” Dylan asked.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to need details,” Abby said with a smirk that caused Greer to smile. She’d been thinking the exact same thing—who had slept with more than one Davies? But it also did the job of ending the conversation and turning it back onto the mission.
“We’ll help,” Greer’s oldest brother, Ryan, said. “I’ll get my FBI informants on it.”
“Come on, son, let’s get to work,” her dad, who was retired FBI, said as he and Ryan headed to the dining room table.
Nash and Kale ran out the door to head back to Mo’s Desert Sun Farm and the massive security center located there. Soon her grandmother’s house was a hive of activity.
“I’ll reach out to some assets and see if we can find out who is behind this,” Cy told her as he headed to the table to get to work too.
“I’ll do the same with the DEA,” Annie added.
Soon her entire family was working the phones. Everyone from her younger cousin Cassidy reaching out to friends she had in foreign countries from her time as an interpreter, to the entire Rahmi royal family using their political power, to her cousin Parker talking to the US marshals, and then to her grandmother offering pies to anyone with information.
Three hours later the entire group had moved to Mo and Dani’s farm. Since they were royalty of the small island nation of Rahmi, the main house on their farm was designated an embassy. They had state-of-the-art security resources and the ability to claim diplomatic immunity for the laws everyone was breaking trying to find Sebastian.
Greer stood in the back of the security building’s large monitoring room, looking at the wall of large television screens hooked to the computers everyone was working on.
She tried to keep calm as her eyes scanned the data, the videos, and the flight plans flashing up on the screens. Abby stepped away from a computer her brother Kale was working on and joined her against the back wall. “We’ll find him.”
“I know,” Greer said. “I just hope he’s still alive when we do.” Greer’s gut clenched as she admitted her worse fear. After all, the only other hostage was already dead. Why would Sebastian still be alive?
“He won’t crack easily. If they’re after the code, we have time. He’s strong, Greer. I wish you’d spent more time getting to know him. He’s a good man, well, some of the time. You’d never find a more loyal friend than Sebastian. I hate not going with you. Please do whatever it takes to bring him back.”
“I will,” Greer promised Abby, wondering if she should mention the kiss they’d shared and deciding to put it on the back burner when Kale jumped up.
“I got something!” Kale called out and everyone whipped their heads to the mounted television screen connected to Kale’s computer.
Black and white video of masked men tossing an unconscious Sebastian onto the concrete came into view. “Where is this?” Greer asked, moving forward to get a closer look.
“The hangar that Dr. Erwin Hoggard was found in. It’s not uploaded to the cloud so I had to have the owner find it and send it to me. That’s why it took so long to get. Wait for it,” Kale said.
A moment later, a man who must be Dr. Hoggard was tossed to the floor, only he was awake as he pushed up to his knees and begged for his life. Greer didn’t need audio to know that was exactly what he was doing. Two men stood before him with a gun pressed to his head. Greer watched as the doctor shook his head, tears running down his face. His mouth moved as he spoke quickly and with jerky hands as if trying to explain something. Then he pointed to Sebastian. Erwin nodded over and over again as Greer assumed the masked men talked to him. Then Erwin’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but before he could say anything the man fired the gun. Erwin fell back, landing on the floor dead.
The man with the gun pointed the gun at Sebastian and Greer held her breath. However, he didn’t shoot. He used the gun to motion toward Sebastian. Two other men rushed into frame and picked Sebastian up. They propped him up between them and then rushed off screen.