Page 56 of Fighting His Fate
She needed to placate him, to make him think she was on his side. “I know how smart you are,” she ventured. “I know about the techniques you developed to fix sperm no one else could use. They’re incredible.”
He slowly came to a stand. “Flattery will get you nowhere. You’re going to die here today, along with your lover.” her eyes widened and he smiled. “I saw the condom wrapper on the nightstand.”
“What about the babies?”
“They never should have been born.”
“But they’re Joni’s sons. You loved Joni. Those boys are the last part of her that’s alive.”
His brow lowered. “Those boys areChampion’ssons, and no part of that man deserves to draw breath on this earth.”
“Please. They’re children. They didn’t do anything to you. Let them go.”
“Those children are a mistake and an embarrassment to my career. An aberration. A liability to my legacy.” He pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and stared at the screen. “Those bumbling idiots finally realized you’re gone.” He turned the phone toward her.
She could see the sun just cresting the horizon, a body of water, a log cabin on the shore…
Their log cabin.
Her mouth fell open as she watched what could only be the men of HERO Force getting into their SUV. “How do you find us?”
“Part of my state-of-the-art security system. A stalker drone. Why just watch a break-in when you can pursue the perpetrators?” He slipped the phone back in his pocket and opened the tall white cabinet, withdrawing a square cardboard box.
“They’ll catch you, you know. They’ll catch you, and you’ll go to jail. But if you return the boys and me unharmed, they’ll go easy on you.”
“Of course they’ll catch me, but you’re wrong about jail. I have something much better planned.” He ripped the box open and brought it close for her to see the contents, brick-sized packets labeled “C4,” a clear bag full of wires. “You still don’t understand, do you?”
Time seemed to stop, images of Toby and Theo alone nearby, as vicious flames and noxious fumes consumed the walls around them. “Please,” she begged, her voice weak. “Let us go.”
“Right now, my research is on its way to the editor of every major medical journal in the country. My findings will revolutionize our understanding of fertility. I’ll be acknowledged as one of the greatest scientists in history.”
The work was Joni’s, not Fleming’s. Grace had read her notes. But there was no point to upset him further by pointing that out. “Fame won’t do you much good in jail.”
He cocked his head, an eerie expression transforming his features. “I told you I won’t be going to jail. I have no intention of leaving here alive. We’re all going down in a blaze of glory—you, me, this company, the twins—and the man who ruined my life when he fixed his cousin up with a cop.”
31
“How the fuckdid he find us?” demanded Brett, his foot pressed hard against the accelerator. It was raining again, the tires struggling for traction on the wet, winding road. He’d known something was wrong, so why the hell had he been at the main house instead of checking on Grace and the boys?
If he’d listened to his gut, he would have been down there. Maybe he could have stopped this from happening. But it didn’t make any goddamn sense. He swerved onto a highway entrance ramp and headed toward Lamont Scientific. “We weren’t followed. There was no vehicle behind us when we left Lamont last night. I’m absolutely certain.”
The sounds of impending battle carried throughout the SUV. A magazine clicking into a gun. A canister of ammo rattling. The Velcro straps of a tactical pack being ripped apart. “There could be a GPS on the vehicle,” said Razorback. “Or a GPS tag on us, or something we took.”
“We were parked a quarter mile away,” said Mac. “They couldn’t have found the vehicle. What did you take with you?”
“A geode,” said Brett. “A bunch of papers. That’s not how they tracked us.” They had to have been followed, but how? He thought of a helicopter and immediately dismissed the idea. They would have noticed a helicopter in a heartbeat.
His mind flashed back to the mysterious hovering object he’d seen when they were leaving Lamont Scientific, the memory mixing with the idea of flight. “Son of a goddamn bitch.” He smacked the steering wheel hard. “It was a drone. The thing I saw in the sky when the lightning flashed. It must have been a drone!”
Razorback swore colorfully. “It followed us back to the cabin. It’s probably following us right now.”
“Jesus Christ.” Brett shook his head. No wonder he felt something was wrong. They’d brought their enemy to their safe house to roost. “We should have been more careful. We should have anticipated they might have high-tech security in place.”
“So much for the element of surprise,” said Mac.
The exit for Lamont Scientific was just a few miles ahead, and adrenaline pumped through Brett’s bloodstream like gasoline into a blaze. He’d done this a hundred times, marched into dangerous territory to battle the forces of evil. But this time there was far more at stake, and it was utterly terrifying.
They were loading up weapons, preparing to enter the place where Grace and his children were being held. One wrong move, one simple mistake, and the consequences could shatter his entire world. The irony that he hadn’t cared about Toby, Theo, or Grace until this week wasn’t lost on him—but now they truly were his everything.
