Cover Me (Elite Force #1)(65)
Author: Catherine Mann

He pivoted on his boot heel toward her slowly. The morning sun streamed down over his windburned face, creased in confusion. “Did you need something?”

“I just wondered if you’re ready to go back with me to talk to Agent Lasky. They’re ready for us to look at some more photos, help figure out who may have been responsible for the bomb.”

A creaking dock plank sounded behind her, giving her only a second’s warning before something solid jabbed against her back. “Don’t make a sound,” a female voice ordered, “or I’ll be forced to shoot you. The gun has a silencer, so no one will know.”

Her eyes shot to Flynn quickly. Why wasn’t he helping her? And then she couldn’t think of anything other than the familiar voice behind her.

Astrid.

The awful, awful recognition gelled inside of Sunny that her brother’s wife had a gun wedged between her ribs and might truly shoot.

Sunny looked back over her shoulder at the woman she’d called family for nearly two years. “What are you doing here? I thought you were camping with Phoenix.”

Some camping trip. Oh God, was her brother here too, somehow tangled up in this nightmare?

Her sister-in-law tugged her hood more firmly over her blonde hair. “Your brother is off doing what he always does, communing with nature as if somehow that’s going to heal the earth. I’m taking action. Since he won’t help me, I’ve just found others who will.” She jabbed harder. “Now, since you interrupted our getaway, you’re going to come along with us in the boat.”

With us? Her eyes went to Flynn. To the line of fishing vessels tied to the moorings down at the dock. To the SWAT team and Wade, all too far away to be of any help.

Oh God, why hadn’t she listened to him about the danger here? All the information they’d gathered and put together with intel pointed to the power plant, but maybe someone on the inside knew there had been a leak, because this group sure as hell appeared to carry off their plan with adjustments to work around the police and military forces in place. Now she truly was alone to fight this battle that could create such far-reaching horror for so many if Astrid got away.

And Flynn. She couldn’t even bear to think of what this would do to Misty. Sunny could have sworn his feelings for her sister were genuine. Maybe there was some hope in getting through to him. “But Flynn? I don’t understand.”

“Flynn? That’s Ryker.” Astrid laughed. Her voice, which had once seemed so lyrical when singing to her infant son, now sounded harsh and discordant. Her eyes lit with fanaticism. She swept a hand toward the nearest fishing boat, with a lean man, his back to them, already at the helm. “And that’s Brett—our partner in the biggest, splashiest front-page news this area has ever seen and just what we need to make people sit up and take notice.”

Chapter 18

Misty slipped away from Agent Lasky, actually fairly easy to do since it had turned into a ghost town, with everyone evacuated. Authorities were confident about their security in place and busy as hell searching for more bombs. Sidling past two local cops on their radios, she scanned the huge parking lot, the outbuildings, the perimeter trees by the bay, for Flynn and Sunny. Sometime over the past twenty minutes she’d lost track of them and as much as she hated to admit it, she needed them.

Winding her way through the festival, she was scared and feeling her deafness more acutely than ever in the four years since she’d lost her hearing. Out of her comfort zone, away from everything familiar, she found this overcrowded, fast-paced world overwhelming. There was so little time to react and so many surprises—people, carts, cars, you name it—zipping past and startling her.

Of course it didn’t help that she was positively nauseous over how she may have unknowingly aided the people responsible for this through her emails with Brett. How easily she’d been lured in. Somehow, he’d known all the right buttons to push to get close to her.

To learn more about the people around her.

A body jostled her from behind as she stuck close to the sidewalk near the water. She jolted, spun around, and sagged with relief at a father kneeling to help his kid with a fishing rod. “Sorry, ma’am.”

She just smiled her apology, painfully aware of how her voice would label her now, make her more vulnerable.

Had she even eased Brett’s path in staging this bombing attempt? Or had he merely worked his way into her affections so he could keep tabs on when she planned to leave? Agent Lasky seemed to think the murders may have been an attempt to keep the community contained. Either the rest of the unaccounted-for people were dead as well, or they were somehow involved in this plot.

Or worse yet, other plots.

So where was Brett now? According to his wife—Misty swallowed back bile—he was on the run and she had no idea where. Andrea Livingston was being questioned further and her home was staked out, only twenty miles away. How much more betrayed must that woman be feeling?

The wind carried the scent of the sea as she circled past a line of three boats on trailers with the power plant logo stamped along the side. Beyond the gate, a small fishing festival was well under way. Looking down the length of the dock, Misty’s eyes locked on Flynn with Sunny. His broad shoulders and back were so wide and dependable. She was lucky to have this second chance with him. She wouldn’t throw it away.

Sunny turned to step from one level of the dock to the next, her face tipped toward Misty for the first time. Misty waved and started to call out across the fifty yards or so that separated them.

Sunny’s eyes went wide. And not in happiness or surprise, but with unmistakable terror. Misty had spent too much of the past four years reading people’s nonverbal cues to doubt herself, even from a distance. She froze in her tracks, half-hidden behind the row of boats and meandering people.

“No,” Sunny signed fast, one hand low behind her back. “Gun. Hostage. Help.”

Horror iced through Misty as her sister was loaded into a security boat tied to a mooring.

Frantically, she studied Sunny closer. The early morning sun caught a glint of metal pressed into her sister’s side. Most definitely a gun held in the mystery woman’s hand. And oh God, Flynn was actually helping by hauling Sunny along? She couldn’t wrap her brain around the possibility that he could do something so horrific, that he could be involved in this criminal nightmare…

Because it couldn’t be him. Somehow, even if it seemed impossible, that had to be Ryker. Her brain began to register the differences. Now she just had to figure out what to do next.