“You trust your gut. It’s what makes you a good agent. Made you a good solider. Your gut told you this plan was going to work and I was going to help you.”
He kept his arms braced on the wall even though her head was touching his chest. He knew she didn’t want to be pulled to him. “Yes. I trust my gut.”
“I trust my gut, too. And my gut says that Damien is going to find me and he’s going to kill me.”
Chapter Twenty
“By now Freihof will have seen the footage of Natalie. Our best estimates based on where he was last seen in South Carolina are that he will be here in twenty-four to thirty hours,” Brandon Han said. A big chunk of the Omega Critical Response team—including Brandon’s wife, Andrea, Steve Drackett, Lillian Muir and Aston Fitzgerald—were all sitting around the kitchen table of the safe house on the outskirts of Westwater.
These were the people who had faced down Freihof in the past, who had, or very nearly had, lost everything to him. The ones who were most invested in catching him.
“So we give him twelve hours tops before we’re on red alert,” Fitzgerald shot back. “Because we all know that Freihof is always at least one step ahead of where we think he is.”
Ren was listening to the team but his eyes were on Natalie. He’d tried to talk her into sleeping. Even had Andrea try. Natalie had rested for about twenty minutes, but had been up wandering around the house for the last half hour.
“We have law enforcement at every major airport looking for him. Hopefully he is so desperate to get to her quickly that he’ll decide air travel is worth the risk,” Steve said. “We’ve also got all smaller regional airports on alert. If anyone files a sudden flight plan to any of the airports within a hundred and fifty miles of here, we’ll get a notification. But our guess is he’ll probably drive, rather than risk detection.”
“I’ll still be ready with my sniper rifle by dawn,” Ashton, one of the best marksmen in the country, assured them. Freihofhad dared to bring Ashton’s beautiful toddler daughter into this bloody fight, a fact Ashton wouldn’t be forgetting any time before ever.
Natalie walked to another window, looking out it, her arms wrapped protectively around her middle. No amount of words had been able to convince her that they weren’t going to let Freihof get to her.
Brandon looked in Natalie’s direction also. “We’ll do one more press interview with Natalie in the morning. Just to make doubly sure she’s seen, then we’ll get her to Omega HQ for safety.”
She had to be able to hear them, but nothing changed about her demeanor to indicate that she was listening at all. She just walked over to the door and stood looking at it. Then began to gently rock herself back and forth, just like she had...
Damn.Ren was out of his chair and over to her in an instant, her face confirming what he’d feared. She hadn’t been just wandering around the house. She was panicking over the door and window locks like she had in the cabin.
Her face was devoid of color. Her nails had dug into the skin at her elbows until they were bloody. She was staring at the locks on the windows.
He had done this to her. By selfishly using the time they had to be physically close to her rather than prepare her for what was coming—this battle with Freihof—he’d tossed her back into this fight with no warning and no mental weapons.
“Natalie.”
She didn’t blink. He gently pried her hands from her arms. “Peaches.”
She finally looked at him. Explaining to her again that they weren’t going to let Freihof get to her wouldn’t help. Instead, he drew her closer to the window.
“C’mon. I’ll check the locks with you, okay?”
“I already know they’re locked. But I can’t stop checking. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t...”
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her forward. “Sometimes we fight our demons. Sometimes we just learn to live with them. Either way, it’s okay.” They stepped forward and tried the lock of the first window together.
When they made it over to the second, he stopped her. “We’ll finish checking all the locks, but before that, I want to give you something. Maybe it will help you feel better.”
He pulled out the tiny piece of equipment Steve had given him. It was flat and not much larger than a dime, sticky on one side.
“This is a tracking device. Omega Sector agents often use something similar when they’re on undercover missions. I’d like you to keep it on even when you get to Omega HQ tomorrow. That way I’ll always be able to tell where you are.”
“Will you be able to hear what I’m saying?”
He swallowed a smile at her natural inquisitive nature overtaking her fear for just a moment. “No, location only. It’s not a communication device, so you can’t hear me and vice versa.”
“Where do I put it?”
He gently lifted her beautiful mane of blond hair from her shoulder and placed it behind her ear. “We’ve discovered this is the least obtrusive place for an agent to put it. If it becomes unsticky, just get it wet to reactivate the adhesive.”
“Okay.”
