Joint Forces (25 page)

A small victory, but she'd take it. Plus, every time she pushed and won, she discovered more about her enemy.

"But I'm going to search you when you come out."

She pulled a weak smile. So much for the paperweight she would have to ditch now.

He kicked the door shut on J.T.'s prison and followed her to the half bath around the corner.

Rena stepped into the bathroom and closed the door. Exhaling, she sagged against the door, searching for ideas. But there weren't any convenient guns in the toilet tank.

She considered writing Help on the window in lipstick, but he might check the bathroom and she couldn't risk triggering his anger.

Yanking open the medicine cabinet, she scanned the metal shelves. No nifty drugs to drop in his drinks.

Nothing but a soap refill and the nail-care products from Julia Dawson's gift at the hospital a couple of weeks ago.

Rena snatched up the metal nail file, bent it into a curve and slipped it into her bra down near the underwire. Uncomfortable as hell, but not visible in the mirror. At least her swollen, tender pregnancy breasts offered better hiding.

Wouldn't that make an interesting headline for tomorrow's television news flash? Pregnant housewife takes down abductor with her killer bra … more details to follow at eleven. Stifling a hysterical laugh, Rena ditched the paperweight in the trash.

Rena flushed the toilet and turned on the faucet. She needed to get a grip.

She twisted off the water, gripped the doorknob. Fear sliced through her with every tight breath. What hell J.T. must have gone through overseas. She'd known, of course, but hadn't really
known
until this moment.

Guilt crawled over her. She hadn't been there for J.T. when he needed her. Sure, she'd gone through the motions when he'd lumbered off that plane. But when he'd walked out of the house a couple of days later, she should have chased his ass down. Dogged him until he came home where he belonged, until he had time to come to grips with his hellish experience.

He'd braved her family, offered her safety, a haven. Love. He deserved the same from her.

She'd fought for her marriage. She'd fought for herself.

Now it was time she fought for J.T.

* * *

God, his head hurt. Groaning, he rolled to his side, off his numb hands. Still they wouldn't move.

He was tied. Ah hell.

He blinked against the dark, his eyes slowly adjusting with the help of a thin bar of light slanting under the door. Small space. Hands tied. Rubistan? His brain logy, he battled with now and then. Wrestled down dread. Forced even breaths in and out to stuff down the swell of nausea. From a concussion?

He filled himself with air. Smells, too. Smells of home. Rena's cologne. He struggled to sit, canting up closer to the scent wafting off … wool dangling overhead.

A coat. Hers.

He was in a closet, not a cell. Relief washed away nausea. Memories blasted through of the man at his desk. Rena walking in. And then… What?

J.T. jerked against his constraints. He had to get out. To his wife. He couldn't allow thoughts of what might be happening to her.

And then he heard her. Her voice pierced the door, growing louder.

He slumped back against the wall. She was alive. For now. With slow, controlled moves, he worked to free his hands as he grounded himself in the husky, vibrant—alive—sounds of Rena's voice.

"I'm telling you, if you put me in another closet and my husband wakes up without me there, he's going to flip out. He gives new meaning to the word
overprotective
. You won't have the chance to convince him I'm all right or bring him to me, or me to him. He'll cause a ruckus that will alert anyone who's anywhere near the house. Then there's no way you'll get that flight schedule you want."

Flight schedule?

Realization dawned through his clearing brain. She was feeding him information in case he was awake.

Warning him. Damn, he loved this smart, spunky woman.

"Your best bet is to put me in that closet with him. You can tie me up. But you need to keep things level until the guy from the base comes with the finished schedule."

What the hell? She had to know that wasn't true.

Of course she did. She must be stalling. She had to be scared to death and still she stayed calm. Pride for her clenched inside him, a welcome break from the other emotions pummeling the hell out of him.

"We really shouldn't wait much longer to open the door," she continued. "Do you think he's hurt badly? I should check him. Since you're wearing that mask, I'm hoping that means you genuinely want us to live.

So why not—"

"For God's sake, lady." A male voice cut through. Familiar? Tough to tell with the pain and door muffling.

"Will you please just shut the hell up for a minute so I can think?"

A smile so damn incongruous with the nightmare situation tugged at him. God love his wife's ability for gab.

"Okay," their captor conceded. "You can go in the same closet. But you will be tied."

"Fine. We all want to get out of this alive. You're making—"

"Tied
and
gagged."

The bastard was dead.

For now, he needed to make the most of the window of opportunity Rena had bought them. J.T.

slumped back onto the floor and waited.

The doorknob snicked. He closed his eyes, forced his muscles to relax.

Light flooded through his eyelids. Rustling sounded. No more talking from Rena. The son of a bitch had truly gagged her. A tic tugged at J.T.'s eye.

More rustling. The heat of another body drawing closer. Settling against him. Rena.

Tension seeped from him.

More heat, another person. "So, Sergeant," said their captor, hot breath blocking out the scents of home.

"You wouldn't he faking, would you? I should probably check."

Ah crap. J.T. had one second to prep himself before—

A fist slammed into his ribs.

Pain rocketed through him. A moan slipped free, from him, from Rena, too. He forced himself to relax again in spite of the pain howling inside him.

"Guess he's still out, after all." The sounds of popping knees creaked as the man stood. "I'll be close by and checking. Often. So no tricks or stupid heroics."

The door slammed shut.

J.T. listened for the sound of retreating footsteps, his head and ribs throbbing. He blinked to adjust again, swallowing back the reflexive need to vomit. He didn't dare risk more than a whisper, and damn it all, she wouldn't be able to answer. But at least they were both alive. In the same place.

He wasn't alone in the cell this time.

"Rena? Rena, babe, I'm okay." He angled up to sit, the pain nothing in comparison to the need to comfort her. "We're okay. We're going to get out of this."

She wilted against him with a whimper.

Glancing down, he could almost make out her face in the murky closet. Best he could tell, she wasn't hurt, other than a bandanna tied tight around her mouth.

He wanted to put his arms around her so damn bad. "You did good. Real good, getting him to do what you wanted and feeding me information. I'm proud of you, babe." Understatement. "Now, here's what we're going to do. Are you listening?"

She nodded against his chest, nuzzling deeper as if she wanted to burrow inside him.

"We're going to shuffle back-to-back and untie each other. Can you do that?"

She nodded again.

Shifting, scooting, trying like hell not to make noise, he moved. His feet bumped old gym shoes, rain boots. An umbrella toppled.

Crap.

He froze. Stopped breathing, waited. The umbrella rolled down his arm to a whisper rest against the floor.

J.T. inched again until his fingers touched Rena's. She linked hers with his for three precious seconds before she picked at the binding.

He searched by touch along her wrists … hell. She was secured tight with some kind of rope. How she made her fingers bend and maneuver along his binds he couldn't even imagine. Her hands must be numb.

And then there was the baby, too.

Damn it, he needed to do something, but all he could do was talk. A wry smile kicked in. That's what she'd always wanted from him, after all, and he could come through now, reassure her if nothing else. Say all the things she needed to hear.

Say all the things
he
needed to say to her in case he never had the chance again. "I still remember the first time I saw you. It was like somebody colorized a black-and-white movie. A hokey thought, huh?"

She melted against him a little and he thought maybe it wasn't so hokey, after all. Too bad he'd never thought to say it before.

"I'm committed to my job, don't get me wrong, and I love the hell out of it. But there are parts that are …

tough. Dark. The things that we do and places we go, it's so—" he struggled for the word "—opposite of home. I don't know how else to describe it. Even when I'm enjoying the job, the whole time that I'm away I still look forward to coming home, flipping the switch that shifts from there to here, dark to bright colors."

Her breathing grew quieter, her fingers slower for a second before she picked at the cord around his wrists again. Her smaller hands pried at the knots better than his fumbling ones, much the way she'd always been able to work free those strings of knots that seemed to build into a chain on the kids' gym shoes.

He leaned forward to give her better access to his bound wrists. "Problem was, sometimes the switch got stuck, my head was there even though my body's here. And I don't know how to be in both places at the same time." A low laugh climbed free. "I can already hear you asking me why the two have to be separate. But there are things I don't want in my house. Things I don't want touching my family. Or touching you."

The cord fell free from him. His fingers burned with the rush of returning circulation. He tried to flex, but couldn't order his hands to move yet. Kinda like how he'd known he should act and say certain things when he'd returned but his body just stayed … stuck.

He couldn't afford the luxury of time now.

J.T. shook his arms and gritted through the fiery pain. "It's not because I didn't think you were strong enough. God, babe, what you do holding this family together year after year while I'm gone… How you held it together today…"

His fingers twitched, clenched, slowly listened to his brain. He reached behind Rena to untie the bandanna gag. "You're the strongest person I've ever met, but you shouldn't have to be." He fumbled, yanked, untwisted the knot. "You didn't sign on for this. I did."

The bandanna slipped free and landed around her neck.

Rena leaned forward, forehead to forehead, tears glinting even through the dark. "J.T.? I didn't sign on for a job. I signed on for you, wherever you are, good or bad places, I want to be there, too."

Her hands still bound, she toppled forward to kiss him and he thanked God for the chance to hold her. A privilege he wouldn't throw away again.

Rena skimmed her lips over his once more, then rocked back on her heels. "Now, what are we going to do to take out that bastard before our son comes home from school?"

* * *

Okay, he was trying not to be an ungrateful brat. Geez, he was already lucky his parents hadn't killed him for holding out about what happened at the restaurant. But like, couldn't they at least pick him up on time? As if it wasn't bad enough everyone would see his "mommy and daddy" drive up to get him.

At least no one had tried to pound him today while John Murdoch was absent and couldn't stick up for him.

Chris slouched lower on the bench. He was really, really trying not to screw up and piss off his folks.

He'd actually turned down four different rides because, if his dad didn't think it was safe for him to drive himself, then he shouldn't take rides with others his age—even if one of those "others" was this really cute babe from his Spanish II class.

Nope, he'd called Bo. A mature choice. Right? Since that's who Dad picked to stay over when Mom was in the hospital.

And at least Bo drove a cool Jeep with the top down most of the time rather than a dorky parentmobile.

"Hey, Chris?" Shelby leaned over the back of the bench into his sight line. "What's going on? I thought you were using your mom's car 'til everything works out with buying you another one."

Geez, her dark hair smelled good swinging right there beside his face. He could even remember how soft it felt when he'd hugged her while she cried.

He looked away, down, scuffed his gym shoe over gum stuck to the concrete. "Dad drove me in today.

He's late picking me up."

She slung her backpack over. "Do you want a ride home?"

Make that
five
ride offers and one of them from Shelby. And he couldn't accept even one. The day just got suckier by the second. "Nah, thanks. I already called Bo to come get me."

"Bo? He's cool. Great Jeep."

"Yeah. He got a Jet Ski to celebrate his cast coming off."

"Really cool." She circled around to the front and plopped down beside him. "How about I wait around with you?"

There wasn't any reason he couldn't talk to her. School was safe or his dad wouldn't have let him come.

"Sure. Thanks."

A bus chugged by. Arms hung out the windows. The shouts and laughs and we're-free noises carried on the wind.

He lifted his shoe off the gum, a long stream of hot sticky pink stretching. "Everything going okay?"

"Great. Really great." Turning, she hitched a knee up onto the bench, a mega-hot knee pressing against his thigh. "Listen, Chris, I just want to say thank-you for being there when I needed a friend. I mean, I don't know who else would have been so cool about everything and not judged me and just helped me—

"

He kissed her.

Oh God, he was really kissing Shelby Dawson. He didn't remember leaning or even deciding to do it. But her face was right there and Murdoch—the lucky bastard who got to do it with her and probably didn't appreciate her—wasn't around. And her lip gloss was all shiny and he had to know what it tasted like before she moved or he would die.