“She’s awake and would like to see you.”
He expressed his thanks with a smile, then stepped into the room. “How’s Momma?”
Aleah beamed at him. “Tired, worn out, and very happy to be a mom right now,” she said. “I can’t thank you enough for saving me. Us, I mean. For saving us.”
“I’m glad that it all worked out okay,” he said. “You sure scared me when you went into labor.”
She burst out laughing. “Scared you?” she said. “After everything I’d already been through, believe me. That was the last thing I wanted.”
“On the other hand,” he said, “it sounds like your daughter is healthy and doing very well.”
“She is,” she said, looking off to the side at the incubator. “I still can’t believe it really. After everything, plus thinking I would have to deal with those men and give birth in captivity on my own …” She shook her head and said, “This was definitely a much nicer experience and a welcome surprise.” She hesitated, looked up at him, and asked, “And your friend?”
“They did surgery to close up the wound in her head,” he said. “She’s recovering a couple rooms over, but she’ll be just fine. She was pretty lucky.” Aleah beamed at the news. “However,” he added, “there’s no sign of the man who kidnapped you, and we’ve had a missive from him and your father,” he said quietly.
“And?”
“Your kidnapper wants us to do a trade, you for my family, which indicates that he’s gotten them away from your father at some point, or something else is going on that we don’t yet understand. If the kidnapper is capable of having a career MI6 man doing his bidding, then he could easily have people in your father’s organization as well—or vice versa. Your father fired back saying that, if we turn you over to the kidnapper, then my family will never be safe.”
She winced. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I don’t know how to get either of us out of this mess.”
“I know,” he said, “and, to make it worse, now we have governments from several countries involved. I don’t know that there’ll be a happy ending.”
She stared at him soberly. “My father is responsible for a lot of deaths now, isn’t he?”
“Deaths on American soil, yes,” he said quietly.
She stared out the glass window on her door. “Any chance I could get asylum in the US?”
“Is that what you would like to do?”
“I’d like a new start somewhere,” she said.
“And what about your fiancé?”
“Well, as you know, I haven’t had news of him for some time. I would hope that he could join me, but I don’t even know—”
“Hopefully that will work out for you. So is the US where you would want to be?”
“Even asylum in England would work for me actually.”
“But both of them, your father and your kidnapper, could get you a little easier there.”
“Maybe,” she said, “it depends on how this all plays out and who’s left at the end of the day.”
He admired her pragmatism in a difficult situation, and, with a note of humor in his voice, he said, “I gather you’re not interested in being a captive again.”
She shot him a hard look. “Six months was long enough,” she said.
“I agree,” he said, “but I need to get my family back too.”
She sighed at that. “It’s just so awful to think that they treat people like chess pieces.”
“How much do you have to do with your father’s business?”
“I haven’t had anything to do with my father at all in a very long time,” she said. “I think the only reason he really seemed to care is the fact that I’m his only living relative. And, now that I have a daughter, the line will continue.”
“But he has no sons. Does that matter?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never really felt that from him. The fact is that he doesn’t have a son. There is nothing I can do about that.”
“Let me see if I can find out what’s happening in terms of what the governments are willing to invest in,” he said.
“And find out,” she said, “if maybe I could stay in either one of them.”
“I will,” he said. “We’re not far off from British waters right now.”
“I do have friends here,” she said. “And access to money of my own. I just need to have a safe place to live and where my daughter can grow up without fear.”
“But if you have to look over your shoulder forever,” he said, “that’ll never happen.”
“You need to take care of that guy,” she whispered. “Both of them.”
“I hear you, but that won’t be all that easy. I need to know where my family is first.”
She nodded slowly. “In my country, I fear they would have just killed them.”
“But we’re not there,” he said, “and it’s your country that brought this to ours.”
“I’m so sorry about that,” she said. “And I’m really sorry for your family.”
“I am too,” he said, and, with that, he turned and walked out.
Chapter 12
When Shelly woke again, Shane walked in her room, pushing a trolley. She looked at it and laughed. “I hope you intend on joining me.”
“Absolutely,” he said.
She sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes. “Breakfast? Or is it brunch already?”
“It’s definitely on the brunch side,” he said. He looked exhausted.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes, I’m fine, but we’re still no closer to finding my family.”
“And you couldn’t roust out anything?”
“Our team was working to follow the traffic cams from her home, but we lost them in the San Diego warehouse district.”
“And what about the exchange that this kidnapper guy wants? Wait. The father and the kidnapper both want different deals, right?”
“Exactly. Regardless, the trouble is, even if we get my sister back, there is nothing saying that she or you or Aleah couldn’t be targeted again. By the father or the kidnapper.”
“So, you need to go on an undercover mission and take them down, right?”
“Right, but it’s easier to say than actually accomplish,” he murmured.
“Got it,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll do the right thing.”
He looked at her, smiled, and said, “Life’s easy if you have a Pollyanna attitude about everything.”
“After this week, I am very aware that life’s not quite so easy as that,” she said, “and I also don’t want you to get injured or hurt to the extent that I lose you.”
He looked up in surprise. “I have no intention of you losing me.” He added, “But I also don’t want to lose my sister and her family either.”
“So what’s next?”
“If we can track down where the father took my family in the warehouse district, and then how and where Aleah’s kidnapper got them and moved them,” he said, “we’ll get a team in to confirm they’re there and extract them,” he said. “But, at the same time, we need to get the boss, Aleah’s kidnapper, or it could happen again.”