Asher (The Mavericks Book 5) Read online

  “What if it’s Chinese police?” she asked.

  “Could be,” Ryker said. “But you’d think they’d identify themselves.”

  “Not if they’re looking to see what we’re up to,” she said.

  “Maybe,” he said but didn’t offer any other theories.

  “Then what difference did it make?” She laid back down on the back seat of the car, her body so tired it couldn’t sleep, and her mind so tired it wouldn’t shut off. It just rolled endlessly on the same loops. She was enjoying nothing about this ride. But then it wasn’t for enjoyment. It was all about finding the twins. When her phone rang, she jumped and pulled it out to check her Caller ID. “Hi, Chandra.” Mickie put her phone on Speaker.

  “Where are you?” Chandra demanded.

  “Driving up the Chinese coast heading for a small village.” She caught Asher’s expression as she said that, and his headshake as he mouthed, Don’t tell her details. Mickie balked at the moment, thinking about what he said and why not. Then she frowned at him, realizing he still likely thought Chandra was involved.

  “Did you get a lead?” Chandra asked hopefully.

  “One of many,” Mickie temporized. “We’re doing the best we can.”

  “And that may not be enough,” Chandra said. “I got another ransom note today, delivered to my hotel. She wants me to bring a legally valid document, with my signature on it and my attorney’s signature on it, transferring the twin’s trust fund to her. She was very insistent that the transfer document was to be from me to the twins directly, and included any guardian in possession of them and taking care of them at the time. I’m to have it drawn up and executed in the next two days.”

  Asher nodded. “I saw that coming.”

  Ryker nodded. “Greed.”

  Asher shared a long look with Ryker. Asher whispered, “A change in the plan?”

  “Or a change in the people?” Ryker added.

  “And, if that was not enough,” whined Chandra, “I also had some military police here today.”

  “Military police? Chinese military?”

  “Well, they were Asian, and they identified themselves as that, yes. I don’t know if they were police. I’m not exactly sure what the term is here. But they were from the military, and they wanted to know what was happening.”

  “What did they want?” she asked, sitting up in the back seat and staring at Asher who turned to face her.

  “I just told you that they wanted to know what was going on,” she said testily.

  “And what did you tell them?”

  “I said that somebody had kidnapped my daughters.”

  She winced. “And did they offer to help you?”

  “I think they more or less offered to throw me in jail first,” she snapped. “They didn’t like any inference on something that happened while we were in their country.”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “Did they threaten you at all?”

  “Of course not,” Chandra said, sounding suddenly exhausted. “They said that they would send somebody over to help me.”

  “Of course. Did you happen to check their IDs?”

  “Well, they had badges, but I don’t remember who they were.”

  “It would be interesting to see if those IDs were real or fake,” Mickie said, as she tried to think of all the possibilities going on.

  At the sudden silence on the other end, Chandra asked, “Do you really think that’s possible?”

  “Yes,” Asher said. “Tell her that it’s quite possible.”

  Mickie glared at him. “It’s just one possibility,” she said. “I guess it depends whether anybody else shows up. Take pictures of their IDs and send it to us next time.”

  “Us?” Chandra asked. “Have you aligned with the two men I hired?”

  “Somebody needs to be aligned with them,” Mickie said quietly. “I’m here in case we find the twins, and they need me.”

  “What they need is their mother,” Chandra said in a clear, crisp, and decisive voice. “If I ever needed anything to help me make that decision, this is it.”

  “Good,” Mickie said, “so start clearing off your schedule and get to the point where you can stay home with them.”

  “Already in progress,” she said. “I’ve offered to give clients their money back and/or to take on one of my two replacements.”

  “And, if you do that, what happens to a few of the people who work with you? Is anybody in danger of losing their jobs?”

  “Wilson Chang potentially, but he can always move on to one of my two replacements. They’ve already been stepping up to do a lot more of the work.”

  “Sure,” Mickie said. “But it doesn’t have the same panache for him, does it?”

  “No, of course not. However, if I step out of the game, he’ll just work for my competitor or get out of this industry altogether.”

  “I guess what I’m trying to ask and not very well is,” Mickie said, “what are the chances that he’s involved in any of this?”

  There was an ugly silence on the end of the phone. “God, I hope not. I can’t imagine looking at everybody I work with and have lived with over the last several years to see if they’re involved in some horrible plot like this to hurt my girls.”

  “People will be people,” Mickie said quietly. “You need to think about it a little more. If you come up with any reason or any actions on anybody’s part that’s slightly sideways that could make them involved in this, you need to tell us and fast.”

  Chandra hung up as her only response.

  Mickie sighed, put away her phone, looked at Asher, and shrugged. “Well, I don’t know if it was the right thing to do or not, but I’ve at least got her thinking.”

  “Well, thinking is something she needs to do,” Asher said. “There’s nothing easy about any of this.”

  “But the fact is, somebody close to her knew that the twins would be here,” Ryker said.

  “But that could be all kinds of people, including strangers when the twins first came through the airport,” Mickie said. “Their faces would have popped up. The media would have confirmed that the twins were here.”

  “And the media did post that too,” Ryker said. “I caught all kinds of online articles on it.”

  “Well, that’s great,” Asher said. “That widens the pool of suspects.”

  “Not necessarily a bad thing,” Mickie said. “Is it?”

  “It’s not a good thing either though,” he said. “We have a ton of people to run down now. This could open up to any number of them.” Just then his phone rang.

  She laid back down and listened to the conversation. It seemed all that they did was send out lots of questions and get few answers back. As she sat up again, she realized the vehicle behind them was that much closer. “Ah, Ryker …”

  “I hear you,” he said. “I can see them.”

  “Yeah, but do you realize that, if they ram us, we have no chance of surviving?”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” Ryker said. As he raced up the highway, heading toward whatever destination he had in mind, suddenly the follow vehicle surged forward. As far as she could tell from the onboard GPS, Ryker’s vehicle was heading in a straight line to a village. “We can’t let them know about the village,” she said urgently.

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” he said.

  As she turned to look back, the other vehicle had sped up so it sat right on their tail again. She tried to study the faces of the men, but they both had on sunglasses and wore hats. “I never realized just how much sunglasses and hats disguised facial features. It’s ridiculous, but I can hardly even describe the men.”

  “You could try taking pictures though,” Ryker said. “They won’t turn out very good, but it’s worth something.”

  Immediately she snatched up her phone and took as many photos as she could, aiming for as much clarity and focus as possible. “It won’t help though,” she said. “Those men are well hidden behind their disguises.”

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sp; “And now that they know that we’re aware of them,” Asher said, “they’ll take fewer chances.”

  “Great,” she snapped. Just then the vehicle behind him sped up, almost to the point of banging into them. “Oh, I don’t like where I’m sitting all of a sudden,” she cried out.

  But Ryker wasn’t done outrunning them. Even as they spoke, her vehicle went faster and faster, and the other vehicle fell behind.

  “They can’t keep up,” she crowed in delight.

  “For the moment,” Asher said. “Ryker can’t do this speed all the time.”

  “So what are we supposed to do?”

  “Get ahead far enough that we can ditch the vehicle and pick up something else,” Asher said.

  She stared at him in shock. “And where will you hide this vehicle?”

  Just then, moving at a speed that was scary fast, Ryker took several corners, sending her flying from one side to the other. When he hit the brakes really hard and then reversed, she couldn’t even figure out where they were, until, all of a sudden, she was in complete darkness.

  “Okay, what just happened?” she asked. “And are we safe here?”

  “We are for the moment,” Asher said. “But obviously we’ll stand out like sore thumbs if we walk out in public.”

  “I know. We don’t have any disguises to blend in here. And where are we?”

  “We’re at the village we were looking for,” Ryker said. “And we have this space to hide in. I took advantage of this opportunity in case there were no more.”

  They quickly opened the car doors and stepped out. Asher looked back at her and said, “Come on, come on, come on.”

  She raced out her side and ran around to him.

  He peeked through the gaps in the boards that made up the sides of this large shed. From the lingering smell, they were in a smokehouse.

  “Is this where they’ve been hanging fish?”

  “Yes, but that stock was taken a few days ago. Probably the older generation has died, and the younger generation isn’t sure they’re keeping it.”

  “So it’s an empty building. Got it.” As they stepped outside, she realized it was broad daylight. She had been underneath the blanket so much lately that she missed the first hour of sunlight, it seemed. She walked to a nearby clothesline. She grabbed an old scarf, wrapped it around her bright coppery hair, and tucked it under her chin. “It won’t help much,” she said. Both men found hats, and they wore them the same as every other person in this village—pulled down low. And somehow, as they walked, they seemed to shrink down in on themselves, making them look older, frailer, and definitely shorter. “I don’t know how you two guys did that,” she muttered.

  “Practice,” Ryker said cheerfully. “But the bottom line is, it doesn’t matter because we can’t keep it up for very long. It’s meant to get us out of trouble but won’t fool anyone long-term.”

  They quickly shifted to a pathway that led toward the water. As they meandered at a slow but steady pace, she picked up several walking sticks and handed them over. They weren’t the finished sticks that they saw everybody else use in China, but they would do the job for right now. As a group, slightly one in front of the other, they made their way to the water’s edge. There, tucked against the brush and the trees, a little bit back from the water’s edge, they studied the boats parked here. A couple were farther out offshore too.

  Just then Ryker pointed. She followed his direction to see a couple shipping vessels out farther and off to the side, in the area in between—loaded with fishing boats.

  “But how do we know which one has the twins?” she asked.

  “We check it out.” His phone buzzed at that point in time. He grabbed it, read something on his screen, and said, “We must go up a little bit farther.” And he led the way.

  “To what?”

  But he held up a finger. Frustrated, she fell in line behind him. If only she knew where they were going.

  Following the GPS on his cell phone, Asher headed toward a small inlet around the corner from where they’d been initially standing. The path was rocky, a little bit rough, and populated with people, but no one was obvious or sticking out. It was just a small fishing village where people were somewhere along the water’s edge and somewhere farther back. Everywhere he looked were boats though.

  As he headed to the spot where his GPS told him to go, he could see one boat slightly different than the others. He immediately headed for it and found the keys in the ignition. It was a fishing boat but with an engine. That was much more his style.

  With the three of them on board, he grabbed the long oar and pushed the boat out from the shoreline to deeper waters. There, for all intents and purposes, they looked like a normal fishing boat, except they had a powerful engine underneath. He turned on the engine, kept it in a slow gear, and headed out toward the other fishing boats. He didn’t want to move too far and too fast. And it had to look more like he was out with everybody else. As he looked back, he saw Ryker throwing out some fishing lines. “If you catch anything,” he said, “I get dibs on cooking your catch for dinner.”

  “Ha,” Ryker said in a laughing tone. “I like mine just fried in butter.”

  “Well, I just like food,” Mickie said. “We didn’t bring any with us.”

  He chuckled. “No, but this boat comes equipped with everything we need.”

  She glanced at him in surprise and then opened the cupboards. And, sure enough, they could cook small amounts of food at a time, and they had some fresh fruit and some basic foodstuffs, including packs of cooked rice and cooked meat and vegetables. She immediately pulled out some of the food and said, “Well, I’ll eat now then, because I have no idea what’s coming.” She made some wraps and offered one to Asher.

  He looked at it, nodded, and took a bite. “Pretty good,” he said. “Didn’t know you could cook.”

  “I’ve gotten pretty good at being self-sufficient,” she said, offering one to Ryker, then making one for herself.

  Asher moved the vessel farther out into the open waters, heading toward the conclave of fishing boats ahead. He needed his binoculars, but, more than that, he needed to look a little bit more touristy than anything. He did a quick search around, studying the shoreline and the other boats that had come out behind him.

  The three of them still wore their disguises. They were not much but it was enough that the fleeting eye would pass them before coming back for a second glance. And hopefully, by then, they were too far out. Then he turned to study the boats ahead of him. The most likely candidate was the one on the farthest side. He headed in that direction, giving the rest of the boats a wide berth, not knowing where their lines were and not wanting to get into an argument with any fisherman pulling lines behind them.

  Just as he swooped outward toward the faster-moving waters, he heard Ryker behind him. He turned to see Ryker pulling in a big fish. Asher laughed. “So, we do get fresh fish for brunch.”

  “I told you so,” Ryker said. He dispatched the fish with lethal precision and quickly had it gutted and fileted right in front of them. He deposited it in the ice box—filled with ice too—conveniently at the back of the boat, along with a small propane grill to cook the fish as well. If need be, they could stay out here for several days if they could fish. And while they had it, … Ryker quickly lit the gas grill, laying the filets on the hot surface. “Sorry, Asher. Since you’re driving, I’m cooking.”

  Asher just grinned and nodded.

  “You’ve done that a time or two,” Mickie said in amazement, when he served her one-third of the fish, freshly sautéed and smelling wonderful.

  “More than a time or two,” Ryker said. “We could use a few more of these though.” He held the rod to her, as she scoffed the last bit of food into her mouth. “Go for it.”

  “I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do,” she said, holding the rod like it was some foreign tool.

  “You’ll never learn if you don’t try,” he said.

  Ashe
r laughed. “Fishing is a good sport, and it’s good for the soul.”

  “Killing anything isn’t good for anyone,” she said.

  He turned, looked at her, and challenged, “Are you a vegetarian?”

  She shot him a look. “I’m not getting into that argument. I don’t mind fishing, but I refuse to kill it.”

  “I can take care of that without any problem,” Ryker said.

  She snorted. “Nice,” she said, but she willingly dropped the end into the water and let it run out on her reel. He quickly showed her how to stop it and then to move the rod back and forth slightly. “I feel like this is the wrong kind of fishing for here, like this is all set up for lakes.”

  “Deep-sea fishing has its own challenges,” Ryker admitted. “But there’s obviously a shoal of fish that’s come in front of a predator, so don’t argue. Just keep fishing.”

  She nodded, and Asher moved the boat gently, slowing it down so that her line would be a little more effective and so they’d look a little more like tourists on a trip than anything. As he saw his target, he cut the motor and let them just drift. He wanted to see who else was around. No sail flew atop the Wild Seas boat. It just sat here. “Ryker?”

  “Yeah, it’s anchored.”

  “Interesting. I wonder if anybody’s aboard.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s the one we’ve been looking for.”

  “I think I’ll head over and take a look.”

  “Good idea,” Ryker said. “I’ll stand watch.”

  Asher quickly stripped to his boxers and, on the far side of the boat, rolled gently into the deep water under the boat. Then he came up so that nobody would have seen him go in, and he swam toward the Wild Seas. It was bigger and probably twice the size of the one he currently had, but still, it didn’t have the capacity to hold too much weight. The anchor itself was solid and would take a lot to dislodge it from the sea bed, which meant that they weren’t too deep in the ocean out here. He floated around the side, looking to see for any way up easily.