Best Man for the Job

Chapter 2

Callan reached for the pistol that should have been holstered at his hip, but his fingertips brushed his slacks and closed on empty space. He hadn’t brought a weapon to Las Vegas because security at the airports was so tight and too many questions would have been asked. The wedding was only going to take three days. He’d felt naked without the pistol, and now he felt vulnerable and helpless.

He clenched his empty hand into a fist. He focused, looking for options.

At the first explosion, he’d crouched, lifting his left arm to protect his face and save his eyesight, and taking two quick steps away from the window because broken glass often became shrapnel. The brief series of explosions echoed throughout the large room but the reinforced windows remained intact except for the bullet holes.

The attendees of the bachelor party reacted slowly, not certain what they were supposed to do. A few of them, prompted by television and action movies, fell to the ground and covered their heads with their arms or shoved their hands into the air in surrender. Partial deafness followed in the wake of the thunderous explosions and the gunfire.

Confused and uncertain, maybe a little drunk or stoned, a partygoer stood facing the men. His hands were over his head and he was crouched, but he hadn’t gone to the floor. “Hey! Hey! Don’t shoot!”

“I said, get down!” One of the men in black coveralls took a single step forward and kicked the man in the crotch. When the guy doubled over in pain, the invader slammed his machine pistol into the back of the man’s head. The impact drove the man to the ground. The invader kicked the downed man in the forehead. The man quivered, then relaxed into unconsciousness.

Callan memorized as much information as he could. Ski masks covered the faces and hair. The coveralls masked body shapes. But he studied the weapons and the footwear. The machine pistols and handguns were expensive, and probably personal equipment. The men wouldn’t throw them away. Stripping off the coveralls would give the men a different appearance almost immediately because they had clothes underneath. They weren’t carrying extra footwear. They would keep the shoes. All of them wore the same black work boots.

A unit. Callan was certain of that. They dressed alike and they moved together, didn’t talk much because they knew what they were doing. That could be a good thing, depending on what they were there to do. Callan hoped it was simple robbery. If Daniel and his friends didn’t act stupid, they would all get to live.

Slowly, Callan spread his hands out and went down to the floor. Seven hostiles stood in the room at strategic points that offered everyone fields of fire. Cold anger stirred inside Callan despite his hopeful thought. The men were professional, at least to some degree, but they weren’t willing to get too bloody with whatever they were doing. Otherwise they would have shot someone to prove they meant business.

Frustrated, his heart hammering, Callan watched in silence as the invaders swiftly worked the room.

“Billfolds and cash out on the floor.” The speaker wore dark brown work boots that laced up to his midcalf. He’d been the one who had flattened the guy who’d moved too slowly. “We want your money and credit cards. All of it. Try anything stupid and you’re going to leave the hotel in a body bag.”

Callan reached inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet. He wasn’t worried about the money. He kept only a little cash in the wallet. The rest was in his pocket and in his hotel room. He knew how to travel in potentially unfriendly environments, spread it out so it wasn’t all seen or lost at one time. Despite the neon welcome mat in Vegas, he knew the city held predators. All metropolitan areas did. Small villages drew hunters as well, but they couldn’t hide as quickly. He’d hunted predators nearly all his adult life.

He shoved the wallet beyond the reach of his hand. He pressed the left side of his face against the carpet. The smell of cleaning solvent burned his nostrils and almost made him sneeze. He watched, looking for the leader. Units tended to cycle around the guy in charge.

One of the invaders pulled a dark green plastic garbage bag from a coverall pocket. He handed his weapon to another man, then walked around the room collecting wallets and cash.

Callan drew a breath. The men were careful, seasoned. They knew how to work a hostile crowd. As the man with the bag made his rounds, another man crossed over to Daniel. The man hooked a big hand in the back of Daniel’s shirt and yanked upward.

“Get up.”

Scared, face red with panic, Daniel got up. He looked confused and lost, more like a boy than a man.

Callan pushed the thought from his mind. The assessment wasn’t fair. He didn’t know his sister’s fiancé, but there was no way Daniel was prepared for what was taking place in the hotel room. Everyone in that room was afraid. Callan knew he was afraid, too, but he was better at working with his fear.

“What do you want?” Daniel spoke more calmly than Callan would have expected.

Good job, kid. Keep your head and you’re going to be okay. Callan hoped that was true.

The man slapped Daniel’s face hard enough to turn his head. Daniel stumbled but the man grabbed his shirt and pulled him up.

“Don’t talk. Talking will only get you hurt. Do what I say when I say to do it.”

Blood trickled from the corner of Daniel’s mouth. He grabbed his attacker’s arm and tried to kick the man in the groin.

Kid’s got guts, but he’s gonna get himself killed. Callan knotted a fist and worked hard to keep himself down. Bruises healed quickly enough.

The invader intercepted the kick on his thigh, then backhanded Daniel in the mouth. In the next instant, the man thrust the pistol into Daniel’s bruised and battered face. The attacker rolled the hammer with his thumb.

Callan started to push himself up before he could check the movement. He froze when a gun barrel touched the back of his neck and shoved him down. The man hadn’t shot Daniel. Callan quieted himself and waited.

The man drew the weapon back almost immediately, his point made. That was professional. Making contact with a prisoner was dangerous.

“Stay still, soldier boy, and you get to live through this.”

They knew him. That fact sent an icy spike through Callan’s gut. This wasn’t just a random heist directed at a bachelor party. They knew who was going to be here, and who the guests were. That also meant the men weren’t here just for the cash. He watched helplessly, feeling his captor’s gaze. They’d put a man on just to watch him.

“You hear me, soldier boy?”

Controlling his fear and anger and frustration, Callan nodded. “Yeah. I hear you.”

Before Daniel could recover from the rough treatment he’d received, the man turned him around. A second man joined the first. After the first man thrust his machine pistol under the second man’s arm for safekeeping, he reached into one of the large coverall pockets and took out a roll of gray duct tape. He grabbed Daniel’s arms and wound tape around his wrists.

Another strip of tape covered Daniel’s bloody mouth. The next one covered his eyes.

Jenny’s voice played in the back of Callan’s mind. Callan, I know this party isn’t your kind of thing, but do it for me. I just want to make sure Daniel stays safe. Those guys can get kind of crazy, but they’re fun crazy. Not bad guys.

Callan clenched his hands into fists. Work through it. Learn what you can. They’re a unit. Seven guys that you see, gotta be more working support and extraction. They’re smart, efficient. They knew about the bachelor party. They knew who would be here. They knew about me.

Knowing about him was the biggest surprise. The work he did was kept off the grid. Not even Jenny knew everything. He’d kept that from her, not wanting his world to touch hers because he wanted her safe.

But he wasn’t sure how many people Jenny had told about her big brother being a soldier. Daniel and Toby had known. Others at the party probably. The info wasn’t secret, though Callan hadn’t spent much time around his sister.

“Everybody listen.” One of the invaders stepped into the center of the room. Although Callan couldn’t see the man’s mocking smile under the mask, he heard it in the man’s voice. “Staying alive is really simple. You stay in this room after we leave, you live.”

Callan’s mind raced. He didn’t want to lose sight of Daniel. Getting Daniel back would be harder if his location was unknown. Callan forced himself not to think that Daniel might not be coming back at all.

The man standing nearest the dancer gestured to her. “I want to take her.”

A protective urge spread over Callan as he looked at the woman. She looked frozen, wide-eyed with fear, but she watched everything going on.

She should be more afraid. Callan seized that and kept hold of the thought, turning it around in his mind. Was she a potential victim? Or a partner getting double-crossed? She didn’t cower at all and watched everything.

The invader that had addressed the room shook his head. “She stays.”

“She won’t be a problem.”

“If we’re talking about her in the middle of this, she’s already a problem.”

The man cursed vehemently and shifted his attention to the dancer. “Sorry, baby. Gotta take a rain check on that. Woulda been fun.”

Instantly Callan’s suspicions cemented. The woman was part of the kidnapping. She’d changed places with the other performer and set off the flash-bangs.

“Let’s move.” The speaker waved toward the door and the exit began. A single man went first, followed by Daniel with two men flanking him. The other four followed in quick succession.

Callan shoved himself to his feet as soon as the door closed.

“Hey!” Toby waved at him wildly, never moving from the floor. “Get down! You heard what they said!”

Knowing fear was riding the man hard, Callan ignored him. The clock was in motion and every tick took Daniel farther away from him. Jenny loved Daniel and Callan didn’t want to see his sister hurt.

The other guests had cell phones and were placing frantic calls to loved ones and to the police. Fearful conversations swelled and filled the room.

In four quick strides, Callan reached the booby-trapped cake. The woman was already on her feet. God, she was beautiful, seductive. Too bad Callan knew treachery always came in packages like that.

The woman looked far too calm and collected. That angered Callan.

She looked at him. “I need a phone. I left mine with my bags.”

“You don’t need a phone.” Callan clamped a big hand on her wrist. “You’re coming with me.”

Her eyes blazed. “Coming with you where?”

“We’re going to get your friends and I’m going to get Daniel back.” Callan started for the door and yanked her after him.

Eryn couldn’t pull free from Callan’s greater size and strength. His hand felt like an iron band around her wrist. Her hearing still rang from the explosions, and adrenaline fueled her fight or flight instinct till she was just barely able to remain in control.

Your friends.

She couldn’t believe that Callan could possibly think she was associated with the men who had just taken Daniel Steadman. Where was the line of logic for that? The man was out of his mind.

Then she remembered the kidnapper’s efforts to get her to come with them. At the time, she’d been repulsed and afraid the answer would have been yes. She’d had no doubts about what the man intended.

Evidently Callan hadn’t seen things the same way.

“I need a phone.” Eryn tried to fight against him, but he dragged her after him like a rag doll without responding. She wanted to scream. She wanted to kick the back of his leg, trip him, then plant a roundhouse kick right into his head. Except that she felt certain the effort wouldn’t have done any good. Callan was big and strong, and all she could do was delay both of them. For the moment, Daniel Steadman was in danger. “I can help if I get a phone.”

Still on the move, his grip almost tight enough to cut off circulation, Callan pulled her in his wake. His long legs ate up the ground.

Like most of the members of the bachelor party, Toby still lay on the floor. He had his cell out now and unlocked the screen. Eryn leaned down and plucked the phone from his hands.

“Hey!” Toby grabbed at her frantically, but she was already out of his reach.

Even if Eryn had wanted to explain, there wasn’t time. Callan was crossing the room in gigantic strides that caused her to take two to his every one. She had a hard time keeping up in the spike heels, but she managed.

She clutched the borrowed phone in her hand, then glanced at it briefly to make certain it was one she was familiar with. Knowing that the other guests would be calling the police and, hopefully, hotel security, she pulled up the phone’s camera function.

Callan barreled through the door and out into the hallway. Eryn hesitated, thinking the gunmen would make good on their promise and leave someone out in the hallway. Irritably, like a cranky parent pulling at a stubborn child, Callan yanked her into motion again.

“Where are they taking Daniel?” His voice echoed like quiet thunder in the hallway.

“I don’t know.”

“They didn’t tell you that part of the plan?”

She couldn’t believe it and didn’t even want to dignify the question with an answer, but she hoped he would listen. “They didn’t tell me any part of the plan. I’m not—”

“You just climbed in the cake, set off the flash-bangs?”

Eryn cursed him inside her mind but kept her verbal anger inside because she knew voicing her observations wouldn’t do any good. Callan was reacting emotionally, obviously worried about the kidnap victim. She remembered what Toby had told her about Callan being overly protective of his sister and how that spread to other people in her life.

She tried again. “I’m not part of this.”

Callan shot her a hard-eyed look filled with determination and resolve. That look cut right through her. “You can lie to the police. Not me.”

“I’m not lying.”

Switching his attention back to the hallway again, Callan kept moving. “They knew about Daniel.”

“The wedding’s probably in the papers. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure there might be a party in the same hotel where the wedding was going to take place.”

He grimaced. “They knew about me.”

“Knew what?”

“Don’t play games.”

“I don’t know anything about you.”

“They did. You didn’t have to. All you had to do was set off the cake.”

Eryn opened her mouth to protest at the same time Callan flicked out a hand and set off the fire alarm on the wall. Warning Klaxons roared to life and pierced the cotton in her ears. Callan glanced at the elevator bank at the next hallway.

Watching the digital numbers on all the cages dropping steadily and uniformly, Eryn suddenly understood the move. With the fire alarm engaged, all the elevators would descend to the first floor without stopping. If the kidnappers had taken the elevators, they would be momentarily trapped.

Room doors opened along the hallway as guests came out. “Is there a fire?”

“Is that the fire alarm?”

Callan brushed through the people as he headed for the emergency exit.

Impressed, Eryn looked at him. “You did that so more people would be around to identify the people who took Daniel.” The move was clever and she instantly respected it. She hadn’t thought of that, but she would definitely file it away. “Those guys will dump the masks and coveralls, but they can’t dump the hostage. You’re hoping you can get an ID from a bystander.”

Callan glared at her, then he opened the emergency exit door and dragged her through. Traversing the stairs was a lot trickier in heels than simply keeping up with Callan. She stumbled and fell repeatedly, always bumping up against that rock-hard back just ahead of her. Moving swiftly, he grabbed her again and again, righting her and keeping her moving. Her feet ached with the constant stress of navigating the steps and she hoped she didn’t turn an ankle.

The bachelor party had been on the fourth floor. Four flights of stairs later, Eryn thought they were going to enter the lobby again. Instead, Callan continued the descent into the underground parking garage.

“The elevators stop at the first floor.” Eryn turned the corner on the landing and headed down the stairs after Callan. The parking garage door was straight ahead.

“Did they plan on taking the elevator?”

“I don’t know.”

Callan shook his head. “They wouldn’t have taken the elevators. Not with Daniel. He’d be too easy to identify, and then the men who had taken him could be identified as well.”

Eryn knew that was true. Hotel security kept cameras in all the elevators. She looked at Callan’s profile, so hard it could have been carved from granite, and wondered who he was and how he knew all the things he did.

He was calm and in control. Not only that, he wasn’t even breathing hard from the pell-mell rush down the stairs. He reached for the knob and opened the door.

Car engines and voices echoed inside the cavernous parking garage. The temperature changed immediately from cool to muggy despite the fact that night had fallen over Vegas. The lows in August usually were in the seventies.

While Callan came to a dead stop and looked around like a hound on the hunt, Eryn took a deep breath filled with carbon monoxide and burned oil. Callan pulled her around to look at him.

“What are they driving?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where are they taking Daniel?”

“Look, you’ve got this all wrong. I’m not—”

Thirty yards away, the side door of a cargo van slid open with a grating shrill. Interior light from the vehicle spilled out onto the parking garage and lit up Daniel Steadman and his captors. The men still wore the black coveralls. The van gaped emptily as one of the men shoved Daniel inside.

Eryn lifted the cell, pointed it at the van, and started taking digital images. The phone was expensive. She hoped the camera utility was, too, but it wouldn’t compare to a 35mm SLR. Still, there might be something recoverable later. She only managed three images in quick succession before Callan jerked her into motion.

The men climbed into the van, but not before one of them spotted Callan and Eryn. He pointed and called out a warning to one of the other men. He grabbed for the machine pistol hanging from a sling on his side.

“What are you doing?” Eryn pulled at her arm, certain they were about a heartbeat from getting shot. “Getting Daniel.”

“You’re going to get shot. You’re going to get us shot.”

Twenty yards out, Callan never broke his stride. Eryn had seen few men with that kind of single-minded intensity. Her father was one of them, and she respected him. But running into a group of armed men was suicidal.

“They didn’t shoot anyone upstairs. Maybe they’re not shooters.”

“They will shoot you. They’ll shoot me.”

Callan’s grip tightened on her wrist. “I thought you said you didn’t know these guys.”

“I don’t.”

“Then you don’t know if they’re really willing to kill someone.”

Two of the men lifted their machine pistols from inside the van. The engine caught and the driver roared backward, then braked forcefully to a stop. The men took aim, cursing loudly at the driver.

Unwilling to run into a hail of bullets to prove Callan wrong, Eryn kicked his leg out from under him and threw herself against him. She was surprised when the ploy worked. They fell hard onto the parking garage’s cement floor just as bullets struck sparks from the smooth surface and whined off into the parking garage. Bullets hammered out glass from a nearby Suburban and punched holes in the body.

The impact knocked the wind from Eryn’s lungs. She lay helpless and watched as the van roared straight at where she lay on top of Callan. The headlights flicked on and the vehicle looked like some hollow-eyed monster bearing down on them. The gunners inside the van kept firing.

Bullets slammed into nearby vehicles. Pockmarks appeared in spiderweb windows. Sparks leaped from fenders as some of the rounds ricocheted. Car alarms screeched to strident life and a light show from the stricken vehicles ignited. A cry of pain from another area of the garage caught Eryn’s attention.

Lying on her side, Eryn tried to push herself up and reach for Callan, certain they would never get clear. He roped an arm around her and flipped himself on top of her. His hard body pressed against her and for a moment her senses swam with the presence of him. Despite the motor smells beaten into the garage, she smelled him, inhaled the musk mixed with some kind of cologne that seemed familiar but was so different on him. His free hand slid up her spine and cupped the back of her head protectively as he rolled.

Eryn realized he was trying to maneuver them from the path of the advancing van but didn’t know if there was enough time. She lay pliantly against him and wrapped her arms under and over his, holding on so tight it was like they were one body. They rolled once more and the van’s tires sped by only inches away. The heat of the vehicle and the stink of the exhaust washed over them as another fusillade of bullets chopped into nearby cars.

Stunned, not believing she was still alive—or in Callan’s arms, Eryn stared up into his slate-gray eyes. Then he released her and surged to his feet like a big cat, the motion so smooth she couldn’t see the parts of it. He was suddenly just standing.

Eryn sat up, not sure if she could trust her trembling knees. The adrenaline still flooded her system and left her shaky. She’d never come so close to being killed. She looked across the garage and saw a guy on the ground. Just a tourist in the wrong place at the wrong time. Miraculously, she’d managed to hang on to the cell phone and it wasn’t broken. She called 911 to get an ambulance to him, even knowing he wasn’t alive.

At the end of the parking garage, the van cut the corner sharply and pulled into the exit lane. The tires shrilled against the pavement.

For a moment Callan stared after the fleeing vehicle, hard and cold as stone. Then he wheeled on her. “You let them get away.”

Chapter 3

Eryn stared at Callan, not believing what she’d just heard. Angry, clad in a skimpy costume, still afraid and buzzing with adrenaline, she stood on trembling legs. Despite their size difference and the volatile circumstances, she refused to back down from him.

“I let them get away?” Eryn’s words came out harsh and angry as she leaned toward Callan. “You ass! I just saved your life!”

“I had everything under control.”

“What were you going to do? Tackle that van?” Eryn snorted sarcastically, her anger momentarily overriding her fear. “I’m sure that would have worked out really well for you. They’d have peeled you off the grill. But that would have made the car easier to identify. Maybe I should have let you go.”

The planes of his face hardened. “Who are those guys? Who took Daniel?”

“I don’t know!” Eryn sipped a deep breath and looked at the phone. She pulled up the shots she’d taken, then triggered the email function and sent them to her phone back in the hotel room and to her home computer.

“Are you calling them?” Callan reached for the phone.

Eryn turned sideways and threw her shoulder into the big man’s arms to block the grab. “No. I’m securing evidence. Back off.”

“What evidence?”

This time his grab was too quick for her and he snatched the phone from her hand while she’d been focused on sending the images. She resisted the impulse to try to get the phone back. Unless she had a baseball bat or a Taser, that wasn’t going to happen until he was ready to hand it over.