Page 84 of Tied Over

You could hear the clicks of lines going dead.

“Something more, sir?” I asked Kage.

“I’m certain you want to know why Doyle called you, and I want to answer that.” The man was thorough in all his explanations.

“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”

“Well, Ian called you because there was only a push-button landline there in the basement meeting room, and for whatever reason, yours is the only number he has memorized.”

“What about Miro’s?”

“Apparently not. But I don’t have my husband’s number memorized either. Who does anymore? That’s what my phone is for.”

“Yessir,” I agreed because it was true. I had my sister’s number memorized because it had started out as the landline for the ranch which I’d used growing up, and became the one for the sanctuary. But it was the only one I knew by heart. I would have to learn Bodhi’s in case my phone and I were ever parted.

“Why does Ian know your number?” he asked me. “Why is yours so special?”

“It’s because it spells a word,” I informed him.

“What word?”

“Teddy-boo,” Bodhi chimed in with a chuckle. “But not boo like at Halloween, but the letters. B-U.”

“I see.”

“We were talking about stupid crap one day in the car, and it came up.”

“Well, I’m glad it did, because calling you saved his life.”

“May I ask how he dialed?”

Bodhi put his arm around me, which helped with the sudden shivering.

“Doyle dialed your number with his nose because that was all he had to use.”

“Jesus.”

“But the phone—like I said, an old push-button kind—was there, and he knocked the receiver off the cradle and punched out your number with his face.”

“And Brodie didn’t hear that?”

“We think he was monitoring the entrance and exit of the building, nothing more. He was confident that Doyle couldn’t make it to the phone with being restrained and because of his injuries. Brodie was far more invested in blowing him up, as well as the SOG team, when they went in to save him.”

“But when you pinged Ian’s phone, it didn’t work,” I prompted him.

“Correct. But we don’t think Brodie knew that. He turned Doyle’s phone off when he kidnapped him and simply forgot to turn it back on. He thought we were tracking Doyle’s phone and would be there shortly. Without Doyle calling you and giving you the cipher about a herald of visions, which hinted at both the identity of the perp as well as the location where he was being held, we would have never found him.”

“Why the cipher?” I asked. “Why didn’t Ian just say it was Brodie?”

“Because, as Ian told Wes, he had no idea if Brodie was monitoring his audio. He knew he didn’t have eyes on him, but wasn’t certain if he could hear him or not.”

“Did Ian know about the C4?”

“Of course not,” Kage rasped. “Think about it. This is Ian Doyle. If he knew, he wouldn’t have called. Ian would have never put the rest of us in danger.”

“That’s true,” Bodhi agreed. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Kage grunted like the apology wasn’t needed.