Badger Read online

  “I gather she cares?” Erick asked. He hit the button on his remote and heard the locks unlocking on his truck up ahead. “Too bad. I was thinking about asking her out.”

  “Go ahead,” Badger said, unable to keep surliness from his tone. “So far all she’s done is nag.”

  At that, Erick and Cade grinned. “Sounds like you care.”

  Badger shrugged. But he’d been wondering the same thing. He turned to look up at the office to see her standing there, arms crossed, staring at them. He lifted a hand and waved. But she didn’t move. He knew there was something between them; he just didn’t know what. And the trouble was, if he took a step in that direction, it would pull him away from his main focus. She wasn’t a one-night-stand kind of girl. She was a staying-around kind of girl. And he couldn’t even think about staying. He knew what he was doing was dangerous as all hell.

  For the longest time he hadn’t given a shit, considering his busted-ass body. He’d have been happy to have found the answers to his questions even if it killed him. He knew it would bother her, but she’d get over it. What he couldn’t afford to lose was his focus. To lose that sense of direction. Yet it was a good way to get a man killed. And, yeah, he knew that meant he was considering keeping himself alive through all this. He wasn’t doing this as a suicide mission. But, if that’s what happened, up until now he’d been good with it.

  Cade smacked Badger on the shoulder. “What are you thinking about?”

  He gave his head a shake and stood glaring at them, only to realize he was a good six feet from the truck, and Erick already had the door open. Badger groaned. “That woman’s making me crazy.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “Like hell it is.” He hopped into the back seat of the truck. It was a big F350 with a full bench seat in the back. It was about the only size vehicle that fit the three of them. They’d always been some of the bigger men in the unit. They weren’t all oversized, like Badger was, but still it took a lot of vehicle space to stop them from sitting in each other’s laps.

  “Yes, it’s a good sign. She cares that you care. But what’s holding you two apart?” Cade asked.

  “Hey, maybe they should be apart.” Erick gave a laugh. “That gives me a chance.”

  Cade shook his head. “She didn’t even look at you. Well, she did, but she was more concerned with your busted-ass body than she was with who you were.”

  “I’m good if she’s looking at my body.” Erick gave another big laugh.

  Badger settled back. He let his friends do their talking, always with the lighthearted banter. It helped them get through the darker moments. “She might even go out with you,” he said to Erick.

  Cade shook his head. “Hell, no, she won’t. It’ll be you or nobody.”

  Badger glanced over at him. “You’re nuts.”

  “Nope. You’re just being blind.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It would be foolish to get involved at this stage.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Road trip,” he said succinctly. “And I’m not taking her with me.”

  “Maybe you should. Sounds like she’s got more trouble than she can handle here. Without anybody to watch her back, she might as well go with you just to get away and stay safe.”

  He resettled in his seat and stared out the big windows. “No, that would be putting her in danger. I won’t do that.”

  “Maybe you should give her that choice.”

  He shook his head. “Hell no. Besides, she’s got a business here and lots of guys like us who need her.”

  There wasn’t much the others could say to that because Badger was right. She had a busy practice. To just pick up and pull out wouldn’t be easy.

  “Anybody got any idea what those letters mean?”

  “She says she doesn’t have a clue. But she must. I understand wanting to keep her privacy, but, if this goes from bad to worse, privacy won’t keep her safe.”

  “I can’t imagine she did anything. She’s one of those super-squeaky-clean scared-to-do-anything-wrong always-walk-on-the-right-side-of-life type people.”

  “Clean, innocent and naive,” Badger said. “And we need people like her. To give a freshness to the air around us. People like that are the reason we did what we did.”

  “And what we’re still doing,” Cade said.

  Erick turned the engine on. “That’s the thing, isn’t it? We’re all out of work. We’ve spent the last couple years getting our bodies back together, and we really haven’t done anything else. What the hell are we going to do now?”

  “We can always work with Levi,” Cade said with a note of humor. But there was also enough seriousness in his tone that the others knew it was a viable proposition.

  “The trouble is, he’s already got plenty of guys, and they’re probably in a lot better shape than we are.”

  “Just because I’ve got a prosthetic arm and leg,” Cade said, “doesn’t mean I’m any less a man than the others.”

  Badger grinned. “Hell, you’re way more than the others. By the time she’s done tinkering with all our prosthetics, we’ll be bionic men.”

  Cade gave him a nod of satisfaction. “See? That’s why we’ve got to keep her safe. Otherwise we have to get a new doc to fix our stuff.”

  “But keeping her safe—what does that mean?” Erick asked as he drove the big truck out into the main traffic and turned right at the next intersection. “Is she in danger? I don’t like those letters any more than the next guy, but every Wednesday? There’s obviously some significance to that.”

  “Significance, yes, but we don’t know why. Maybe he only gets one window to write and mail letters? We can only guess.”

  “In that case it would be a Monday or Tuesday, depending on where he lived.”

  Just as he pulled into the back of the parking lot of a local pub, Badger’s phone went off. He pulled it out, looked at the number and said, “It’s Kat.”

  Erick turned off the engine. Instead of getting out, he twisted in his seat, propping his arm on the seat back and asked, “What’s up?”

  Badger shrugged and hit Talk. “Kat, what’s up?” But there was no answer. “Kat? … Hello?” He slowly raised his gaze to the other two men. “Her number came up. But there was no answer.”

  “Did you hear any breathing? Did you hear a sound on the other end?”

  Badger shook his head. “It’s almost as if the person hung up right away. But there was no dial tone to tell me it was dead.”

  Erick turned around in his seat and turned the engine back on. “I suggest we go check.”

  In the meantime, Badger hit Redial. It rang and rang. “Now she’s not answering.” He quickly called the second office number, hoping somebody, like Jim, would answer. But it rang and rang too. “The office is closed for the day now, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, we should have brought her with us,” Cade growled. “Especially after reading those letters.”

  “The letters didn’t say anything. And there was no indication anything was about to happen. Yes, it’s Wednesday, and she got her seventh letter. But again we don’t know what that means.” Erick’s voice was terse, but his words were sensible.

  When he couldn’t get the feeling inside to go away, Badger knew something was majorly wrong. He’d received lots of pocket phone calls; this didn’t feel the same. It felt worse.

  They were only minutes away. By the time Erick parked on the side street around the corner from the office building, Badger was already out, racing toward the front of the building. Erick and Cade joined him.

  “Is there another entrance into the building?” Erick asked. “Of course there is, but do we know where?”

  Badger nodded and veered off to the side. “It’s this way.”

  The back door was locked. But, as it was, the janitor was unloading mop buckets and a box of cleansers. They waited until he opened the rear door and called out, “Thank you,” and bolted toward Kat’s office. When they arrived, her door was
locked. All the lights behind the glass were turned off. Erick brushed them aside. “Let me get this.”

  “There should be a security system,” Cade warned.

  Erick nodded. “Of course there is.” He had the door open in seconds.

  Badger had no idea how long they had before the alarm went off. They raced to the back of the office where the alarm panel was mounted on the wall. A count of seventeen seconds remained. Nobody was in the office that they could see. But while Erick worked on the security system, Badger and Cade did the full sweep. “It’s empty,” Cade called out.

  “And the security system was never reset. So it wouldn’t have gone off,” Erick snapped, appearing in front of them, his face grim. “The only reason she wouldn’t have set it for the night is if she couldn’t. She’s got hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment here.”

  “But it’s all very specialized. It’s not like something somebody could come in, scoop up and sell on the black market.”

  Badger studied her lab setup. “Nothing appears to be disturbed. Nobody’s here. Outside of the fact the door was locked, and the security was not set, that could be just because we rattled her about those letters earlier. Maybe nothing’s wrong.”

  But he knew that wasn’t true. He swept an arm toward the empty building. “Let’s make sure her vehicle isn’t parked in her spot, then head to her place to see if she made it home.”

  The three men chose to go down the front stairs, out the front door. But there was no sign anything had happened to Kat, and her vehicle was no longer parked in her spot. Back in the truck, the trip to her place took almost as long as it took to get to the pub. In other words, it took nothing. She only lived about six blocks away. He’d found that out months ago. They pulled up outside the small two-story house that had the appearance of a bygone era with a large veranda at the front of the house with gardens off to the side. It was a large block, and the neighbors were set back a ways.

  The three men got out of the vehicle and walked past the house, being careful to not look at it. The last thing they wanted was to give any kidnappers an inkling they’d been seen if there was a hostage situation inside. When they spied the alleyway, that played into their hands beautifully.

  They walked around the block to the east, coming up the alley until they reached the neighbors beside Kat’s house. From there they peered over the fence, studying the layout of Kat’s property. A garage was in the front, and the door had been closed, so, if Kat’s vehicle was in there or not, nobody knew. A side door led into the garage. Somebody needed to get in there and check for her car. If she hadn’t made it home, they needed to track that vehicle, and they needed to track it now.

  Badger said in a low voice, “I’ll check out the garage. Be back in two.” He hopped over the fence, barely holding back his cry of pain as he came down hard on his sore leg. He’d heal. Eventually. Or maybe Kat was right. He should give it a little time before he went for another run. On the other hand, if running would save her life, he was up to being a marathon runner today.

  He slipped across to the garage and reached for the door knob—locked. He quickly pulled out the kit he carried in his back pocket, and had it open in seconds. He froze. A vehicle was in her garage. But it sure as hell wasn’t hers.

  Chapter 4

  Terrified, Kat sat on her own kitchen chair as the man behind her held a gun to her head and a finger to his lips. A cloth rag was tied around her mouth to keep her from screaming. She didn’t know what they might have seen or heard, but, all of a sudden, instead of leaving her as she was, they tied her up. As soon as she was secured, the two men split in opposite directions, both with weapons out, checking the lower floor of her house. They’d already checked it once, but obviously they were looking for something different now. She didn’t know who they were. They’d accosted her as she was getting into her vehicle at work.

  She’d been picked up, tossed in the trunk of their car and taken home. That they even knew where her home was, was terrifying. She’d tried to contact somebody for help on her phone by hitting Redial. Whoever the hell that was. But she’d lost her phone when the vehicle had careened around the corner.

  She leaned her head back, thinking. She didn’t know who the men were, but they obviously knew who she was. The obvious conclusion was this had something to do with the letters. But it could just as easily have something to do with the three men who came to her office earlier. She was well aware Badger was on a dangerous mission. Were these men after Badger? Or were these the men Badger was after?

  Not that it made any difference to her right now. She had to get through this. The last thing she wanted was to die in her own home as a captive.

  She didn’t know if these men knew she was missing a leg herself. She hoped not. While she’d been designing others’ prosthetics, she’d been working hard to improve her own. She still had a few tricks to play, but she had to get her legs free first.

  The larger of the two gunmen who’d been looking out the front windows came past her and headed toward the kitchen. She could hear them whispering that they heard sounds in the backyard and thought they saw somebody peering over the fence. That could be anything from nosy Dorothy down at the end of the alley to Badger, who had, for whatever fictional tale she wanted to conjure up in her head, come looking for her.

  Her mouth was so dry. She was desperate for some water. She was also exhausted after her long day. She didn’t realize how much those letters were having a negative effect on her system. Just dealing with the issue was depressing.

  The two men came through the kitchen, headed for the stairs, then ran to the second floor. She watched them, frowning. The second man was much slimmer, smaller. She’d call him more of a monkey of a man. He reminded her of one of the old-style chimneysweeps. Something was creepy and dirty about him. The larger of the two men was better dressed, had better diction, appeared to have a little more money and a little more self-care. But something about his exaggeratedly large teeth sent shivers down her back.

  They hadn’t touched her other than to pick her up and tie her down. But she knew, with night falling, their minds would turn to something else. And that was when she would get her chance. In order to rape her, they’d have to untie her from the chair. She just needed a few moments with her leg free; then she could possibly save herself. She didn’t think anybody was coming to rescue her.

  Just as she figured that, she glanced around, hearing something behind her. Twisting she caught sight of a face in the glass panel of the door that led to the garage. She froze.

  She didn’t know if she should be happy or terrified. She didn’t think her two kidnappers were expecting a visitor. The last thing she wanted was to consider a third asshole was party to her kidnapping. But she couldn’t imagine who else it could be at her door.

  When she heard a snick, she realized the door was opening. She knew the men had locked it behind them because the bigger guy had ordered the little one to do it. She presumed he had followed that order; otherwise, how did they pull off these kinds of criminal acts?

  Her neck was really hurting. She couldn’t keep looking around the corner. But when she heard footsteps ever-so-slight behind her, she twisted again. Her gaze was wide and terrified, and her gagged mouth opened a bit in shock, but no sound came out.

  Badger stood beside her. He put a finger to his lips and whispered, “How many?”

  With her hands tied behind her back, she lifted two fingers and squeezed the rest into a fist. He noted her actions and held up two fingers. She nodded. He pointed up the stairs, and she nodded. He held his finger back to his lips and disappeared out the door, the way he’d come in.

  Her heart pounded; hope raced through her bloodstream, but she didn’t understand why he was leaving. And without her.

  But she sure as hell hoped it was to get some help. No sooner had that thought entered her mind when two men came through the door. Had they been seen?

  Erick stood in front of her. Pul
ling out his pocketknife, he quickly cut the ties around her ankles and wrists. At the same time, Cade loosened the gag on her mouth. Cade helped her to her feet and tugged her toward the door. She twisted to look at the other two men, not wanting to leave without them. Badger waved her off. And she realized his focus was already on the men upstairs. Just then she heard running footsteps. Cade pulled her out of the house and into the garage. He took the knife and plunged it into the tire closest to him and walked around to do the same to the others. With the vehicle disabled, he tugged her to the back of the garage and out the door. He helped her over the fence and then hopped the fence into the neighbor’s yard with her. Within seconds he gently pushed her into the back seat of a truck.

  She slid inside, her voice and breath raspy and harsh. “How did you guys know?”

  “Didn’t you call Badger?”

  She stared at him in surprise. “I hit Redial. But I never got a chance to say anything. They turned a really hard corner, and I got slammed up against the inside of their trunk and lost the phone in the darkness.”

  “Did you hear it ringing again?”

  “I don’t think so. They were probably already dragging me into my house by then.”

  “We need to get your phone back. Is it in the trunk?”

  “Yes. You should help Badger and Erick.”

  Cade laughed. “They’d consider that an insult, by the way.”

  She stared at him. “What? Why would that be insulting?”

  “The two of them against two kidnappers. That’s easy odds for our guys.”

  She shook her head. “The kidnappers are armed. I forgot to tell him that. They have guns.”

  “That’s all right. Our guys do too.”

  Her jaw dropped open as he pulled a pistol from a shoulder holster under his jacket. “Are you allowed to carry that?”

  “Yep, we are. It’s one of the reasons we were contemplating going to Texas. Working for Levi. It would help us continue to do the same work we’ve always done, and we get to carry guns.” He plastered a grin on his face.