“Be careful.” Her father kissed her cheek as her mother came up to join her.
“Remember, the cold will alter your reaction time when shooting and air will be thinner up there. You’ll need to calculate that into your shots,” her mother said before kissing her too. “I love you, Greer. You four protect each other.”
Her mother and father kissed Jackson and then they were finally off. Greer’s blood strummed with the need to hunt them down and strangely, she had a very strong desire to protect Sebastian. Not just to rescue him, but to keep him safe from harm.
“They’ve taken off and are heading north. Newfoundland might not be our final stop,” Greer told her team the update she’d gotten from Alex as they got out of the SUV to board the private jet at the Lexington airport.
A man stepped forward with three huge bags. “Dylan said you needed arctic gear. Here you go.”
Lucas and Talon grabbed the bags as Greer and Jackson took the weapons from the SUV. One look at the guns and the man bolted for his truck.
“Eat and drink as much as possible when you’re not sleeping,” Greer told her team as the plane prepared to take off. “We don’t know how long we have or what the conditions will be when and where we land. We need to take this opportunity to rest up as much as possible.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Lucas said with a big grin. He was a sweet guy. He hid his abilities under a big goofy grin, but there was no one she’d rather be there with than this team. “I sure hope I get to see a polar bear. I’ve been missing my Bertha something fierce.”
Bertha was a polar bear near his hometown. Greer had seen more pictures of them together than she thought was right. Some pictures looked as if Bertha was trying to eat him. In others she was letting him rub her tummy.
“You know, there’s a Bertha in Shadows Landing. She’s this big old alligator. I bet she could take your Bertha,” Jackson said with a smirk. Talon rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“No one can beat my Bertha! Take that back right now,” Lucas said before launching into a tirade about why his Bertha was better than the alligator.
Greer closed her eyes to the debate and her mind went to the last time she’d seen Sebastian. He’d been yelling at her for putting herself at risk after she got a little scrape. Okay, it was a stab wound, not a scrape, and set Sebastian off on a tirade questioning her ability and her intelligence. She’d yelled at him and called him a stuffy suit and asked what he knew about fighting for anything. Then he’d kissed her, glared at her, and stormed out.
She knew she’d made him mad but after he stormed out, Greer realized something about herself. Right now she was struggling with a real love-hate relationship with Sebastian Abel. She just hoped she could get to him in time to figure out if it was more love or more hate.
Greer had ordered her team to rest, but knew she’d never be able to fall asleep. Instead she’d texted with Alex, Abby, and Dylan. They were closing in on landing in Newfoundland when the call she’d been waiting for came through.
“They’ve landed. Pond’s Inlet, Nunavut, Canada,” Abby told her. “It’s Inuit land that’s across Baffin Bay to Greenland.”
Greer pulled up imaging and looked at the tiny airport. “We’ll be spotted the second we land.”
“It’s Dylan,” Dylan said as if Greer couldn’t figure it out. “There’s a cargo plane about to leave Newfoundland for Thule Air Base in Greenland. I think you should take it while we track exactly where they take Sebastian. Then you can take a helicopter to rescue him.”
“Agreed. Landing a plane in Pond’s Inlet will be a big flashing light drawing attention to us. Contact Thule and let them know we’re coming,” Greer said before hanging up and waking her team.
Greer opened the bags and tossed out the thick down jackets the man had delivered. There were also pants, goggles, hats, gloves, snow boots, and more. “Here you go, Lucas,” she said, handing him the jacket as the plane touched down.
“Thanks, but I don’t need it.”
“You’re in a T-shirt,” Greer said, feeling silly for pointing out the obvious.
“Yeah,” he smiled. The door to the plane opened and Lucas bounded down the stairs as she, Talon, and Jackson gathered all their supplies.
“Brrr,” Talon, who had been born in Australia said as he shivered.
“This is fantastic!” Lucas called out from the bottom of the stairs as he spun around in the snow with his arms outstretched.
An Air Force pilot stood nearby looking at Lucas with confusion. “Are you all the people I’m transporting to Thule?”
“Yes,” was all Greer said. He waited to get more information, but Greer didn’t supply it.
“Okay, then. We’re leaving now. Let’s go.”
The pilot turned on his heel and left them to follow. She didn’t doubt that he’d seen the load of weapons as they followed behind him. In a couple of hours, they’d be in Greenland and hopefully they’d have an idea of where Sebastian was. There was a need building in her to get to him as quickly as possible.
Sebastian’s head and arms were killing him. His head pounded as he came back into consciousness. The first thing he realized was he was freezing cold. The second was his neck was throbbing where he’d been stabbed multiple times with needles. The third was that he was well and truly bound, strung up like a side of beef with his arms stretched painfully up and over his head.
Sebastian’s eyes fluttered open and he found himself in a twenty by twenty foot industrial-looking room. The floor was concrete and two stories above him was a warehouse-looking ceiling. There was a mezzanine of industrial steel rails and metal mesh walkways halfway up the exterior walls. Several rooms were off the mezzanine walkway, but they appeared empty.
Sebastian looked around the room he was in and figured it was a cafeteria. Long tables were stacked up against one side of the wall and what looked like a kitchen was situated off the other side.
He shivered and looked up and down at his strung-up body. His hands were bound and a hook suspended from the ceiling kept him stretched out. His feet were bare and cold against the concrete. His chest was bared to the cold air as well. Sebastian was wracked with another shiver as he struggled against his restraints.
“Mr. Abel, I see you’re awake.”
“Who are you?” Sebastian didn’t need to know why he was here. He guessed it had to do with the code he had in his head.
“Who I am is not important. It’s what I want that is important.”
Sebastian looked the man over. He appeared to be in his late forties, was around five feet nine inches tall, and didn’t appear to be a killer. However, Sebastian knew better than anyone that looks could be deceiving.
“Let me guess, a general in the Chinese army?” Sebastian asked, but only got a smile in return. The man was dressed in a thick fleece and Sebastian desperately wanted it.
“As I was saying, you have something I need.”
“I hear that a lot,” Sebastian said in a neutral tone.
The man gave a slight nod of his head and someone Sebastian hadn’t seen behind him whipped his back with something that felt like a metal cable. Sebastian cursed as his body swung on the hook. Pain unlike anything he’d ever felt before erupted across his back. Then a second man whipped him in tandem so that there was no break between the painful blows.