Forever by Janie Crouch

Chapter Three

Ethan

I crossedto my uncle and gave him a hug. “Didn’t expect to see you here. How’s the family? Everyone okay? Aunt Wavy?”

He looked me in the eye like he knew I would be watching for a lie, and I was. He smiled, though it wasn’t his real one. A polite version of it.

That didn’t make me feel better.

“No worries, kid,” he said. “The whole Bollinger clan is doing well. Wavy would kick my ass if she knew I was seeing you. I didn’t have a chance to tell her.”

“Can we get on with it?” came from behind me. Kramer had finally stopped pacing, had his hands on his hips, and glared at Ian and me.

Ian’s smile turned icy. “I see you’ve met Nigel Kramer and Sidney Yang.”

“We weren’t formally introduced.”

“Is there an update, DeRose?” Kramer asked. “Do we have a plan? We’ve been waiting for the wunderkind here to arrive, not that I’ve been given any explanation as to why.” Kramer turned to General Moss. “Especially when you have the entire fucking Navy at your disposal.”

I caught my uncle’s gaze and raised an eyebrow, silently asking what the hell was going on. My fear had dissipated when he’d said that everyone was okay, but this still wasn’t adding up, and I needed answers.

“Let me bring Ethan up to speed,” Ian said, walking over to the large dining table in the adjacent room. “And then we’ll discuss the plan.”

Kramer threw his hands in the air. “We don’t have time for this.”

Ian held out a hand. “Nigel, I promise you that taking the time to do this properly—despite how it feels at this moment—is a thousand times better than going in recklessly and without a plan.”

He set out a pile of folders on the table and flipped the first one open. There was a picture on top—a young Asian woman.

“This is Susan Yang, twenty-three, Mr. Yang’s daughter,” Ian said. I could see the resemblance between them. “Mr. Yang is a U.S. Foreign Service officer, and his post is in Malaysia. Ms. Yang has been kidnapped.”

That sucked. Kidnapping happened for a myriad of reasons, none of them good. But I didn’t know this girl, and nothing about her told me what I was doing here. I kept silent.

Ian flipped open the next folder, and I froze in place. This photo I did recognize. The guy’s face was burned into my brain.

“That’s my son,” Kramer said, not waiting for Ian to give the breakdown. “Russell Kramer. He’s twenty-two. Also kidnapped.”

This was the guy that Jess had been flirting with the night of her twenty-first birthday two months ago. The guy that had made me question my entire world. And if he was close with Jess and had been kidnapped . . .

My heart started pounding in my ears. I didn’t wait for Ian to flip open the last two folders. I did it myself.

There she was, her perfect face staring up at me from what looked like her ID photo. The other photo I knew to be Alena Spence, her best friend.

Kidnapped.

Jess had been kidnapped.

Everything around me snapped into focus. Like I was back on active duty and this mission was all that mattered—because it was.

So this was why I was here. Because Ian knew that if there was one person who would do anything in the world to get Jess back, it was me. I would not stop or rest until she was safe.

Information I had dismissed before now whirled in my brain, and I sifted it for anything I could use to help rescue Jess. I didn’t have all the intel. I needed to be patient. But that was asking the impossible. Only seconds had passed, but it felt like an eternity. Everything in the room had shifted.

Everything in the world had shifted.

When I’d asked about family, Ian had told me that all the Bollingers were well. He’d framed it that way on purpose, knowing he couldn’t say the family was well because Jess was very definitely family.

Now I saw the agitation and the tension in the men in front of me for what it was: worry and panic for their loved ones. The same reaction I was experiencing. I could forgive Kramer’s obnoxious comments .

Because why weren’t they using the entire fucking Navy to find Jess?

As if this were one of the critical missions I’d been a part of over the years, I forced my mind to quiet. This time, it was much harder. The thought of Jess in the hands of someone with intent to harm her?

I was going to find her, and I was going to bring her back.

“Tell me everything,” I said.

My tone had every man in the room snapping their eyes to me, and the atmosphere went still. I met their gazes in turn. Yes, I was a different man than the one who had walked into this house.

I made the connection before Ian could start speaking again. “They’re all from the fellowship program, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” he said. “All four victims are recipients of the Vandercroft Biotechnology Fellowship.”

That made sense. Jess had been a part of the program since she was fourteen, brilliant as she was. So all three of her companions were equally intelligent.

“We have confirmation that they decided to go to Constanta Beach in Romania, just off the Black Sea. Tickets confirm that’s where they were.”

“I’ve heard of it.” Mostly from Jess. It was a common vacation spot for the younger European crowd and generally considered to be a safe location. “We’re sure they were kidnapped?” I asked, clinging to some desperate hope that everyone was overreacting. “No chance they’re just holed up somewhere and enjoying their vacation out of sight?”

I didn’t particularly like the thought of Jess doing anything out of sight with this guy Russell, but I would take it if it meant she was safe.

“Unfortunately, we’re sure.” Ian opened a laptop to a video clip. “They were last seen eighteen hours ago. We don’t know why exactly they went from Constanta Beach to Moldova, but we know they were there.”

The grainy security footage showed the group of four walking along a cobblestone sidewalk. There was no sound to the footage but they were obviously chatting, dressed casually.

They were about to cross a street when a car whipped past them and made one of them—Alena, I think—jump back to keep from getting hit. They all laughed at the close call, so caught up in the adrenaline that they didn’t see the van pull up behind them.

It happened in seconds. The van stopped, all doors opened, and masked men swarmed out. It was perfectly timed and executed. These guys were professionals.

Jess was the last one grabbed. I could see her on the video, identifiable by her bright blonde hair. She’d fought back, getting a couple hits in before another guy came back to help. I almost smiled through my gritted teeth, proud that it took more than one of them to force her into that van.

But that almost-smile faded as she took a blow to the face from one of the kidnappers. My hands curled into fists, and rage bubbled through my veins.

The punch didn’t stop her. She used every bit of training she’d learned from living around the Linear Tactical guys over the years. But even if she’d managed to get away from these two, she still would’ve been outnumbered.

The van pulled away smoothly, and they were gone.

I tried to swallow past the fear that closed around my throat as the van drove out of sight of the security camera. I knew, just as Jess had—which was why she’d been fighting so damned hard—that once she was in the van and taken, her chances of survival went down significantly.

No. I refused to even entertain that thought.

“Any other video?” I forced out.

Ian shook his head. “Not much. A few shots to give us a direction on the van, but barely anything. We’re lucky we got this. The pickup may have been planned. The visibility is too perfect. Maybe the kidnappers wanted us to see the kids taken so that we’d be prepared for whatever ransom they’re going to demand.”

“What we don’t know,” General Moss said, “is why they were taken.”

Ian nodded. “It’s a perfect storm of reasons.”

“Expertise?” I asked.

“That’s one,” the general admitted. “Political leverage over Yang here is another.”

“And your son?” I raised an eyebrow at Kramer.

“Not only is Russell brilliant enough to be part of the fellowship, our family comes from money.” He began pacing again.

Ransom from a billionaire was more than enough motive. I didn’t have to say aloud that Jess also came from money. Ian and I both knew. Her father was a former country music superstar. Cade Conner. It didn’t matter that he no longer performed; he was still a household name all over the world. Her parents had done a pretty decent job of minimizing the public connection for Jess’s sake, but it wasn’t too hard to find if you were looking.

Jess’s friend Alena was a blank spot. No family represented here, so probably no political or financial bigwigs in her closet.

Ian followed my gaze to her photo. “Nothing there yet. No obvious monetary connections, but we’re still looking into it.”

“Any chance this was random?” I asked. “Like we said, Moldova is pretty damned unstable. Maybe the kidnappers saw a group of Americans, decided to give it a shot, and they don’t know that they’ve gotten lucky?”

“It’s a possibility,” Ian said after a moment of silence. “But my gut says it wasn’t random.”

My gut was saying that, too, but it would be far simpler if it were random.

“Either way,” General Moss said, crossing his arms, “we want a plan in place before any demands come through.”

“You need a SEAL team then,” I said. “This would be an easy job for a full team.”

I didn’t miss his slight wince. “That’s not an option at the moment. Relations with Moldova and the surrounding nations are tenuous at best. The US can’t send in any official teams and risk those relationships for civilian assets. Private sector only for now, which is where Zodiac Tactical comes into it.”

“We have a team ready.” Ian crossed his arms over his chest. “Wheels up in two hours. I need you on that team.”

I gave him a look. “Did you think there was a chance in hell that I wouldn’t be on that plane after you showed me her picture?”

The corners of his mouth tipped up for a moment. “No.”

He tapped out something on his phone, and the front door opened. Two men I didn’t recognize entered but were clearly expected. “Mr. Yang, Mr. Kramer, my associates are going to go over everything again and make sure that we’ve gotten everything we need, double-check we haven’t missed anything that will help the team get your children back.”

They split off to talk to the men, and Ian pulled me back into the living room, General Moss following. Ian put his hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?”

Was I okay? No. I wasn’t. I was desperately forcing my mind to focus on the task at hand and not on the fact that Jess could be scared, hurt, or worse. I was trying not to imagine all the ways that things could go horribly wrong in this situation. But I didn’t need to be okay, I just needed to be focused. This was the mission now.

“I’m going to get her back.”

Ian nodded. “I don’t doubt it.”

I turned my back so no one in the other room could hear. “Why don’t you tell me why I’m really here? You could get anyone for this mission. Better people than me. And I’m not stupid enough to think that my relationship with Jess isn’t a drawback.”

You never sent people on missions like this when they were involved with the victims. They couldn’t think clearly, and that kind of emotion caused bad decisions. Not that I was going to allow that to happen.

Ian sighed and looked at the general, who nodded. There was more. I’d known that from the beginning.

“This is a lot more complicated than we’re letting them know.” Ian kept his voice quiet.

“How?”

General Moss rubbed the back of his neck. “One of the four people who was taken is a traitor.”

I stared at him. “What?”

“Research was stolen from the lab at Vandercroft right before the four of them left on vacation,” Ian said. “Critical research. The kind of thing we don’t want in enemy hands.”

Fuck. That changed things.

Moss and Ian shot a look at each other.

“What?” I asked. I needed all the info.

Ian’s hand fell onto my shoulder. “We don’t have confirmation but . . . right now it looks like Jess is the traitor.”

I shrugged his hand off. “No. No way in hell. You really think that Jess is a traitor?”

Ian shook his head. “Of course not. But I have to look at what’s in front of me. And right now, that’s where the evidence is pointing. You and I both know that things like this are never as simple as they appear.”

“Could she be under coercion?”

The general nodded. “We’ve talked about that. It’s possible. And Kramer and Yang both have pasts that make us cautious. It’s not out of the question that their kids are responsible. Ultimately, the important thing is recovering the stolen data. Lives are at stake in a very literal way.”

“I’m assuming you’re not going to tell me why,” I said.

General Moss shook his head. “Clearance.”

I nodded. When I’d been on active duty, our SEAL team hadn’t always had clearance to understand everything about our mission. So not getting top secret info now was to be expected.

But damn, I wanted it. Even tangential information could be useful in a situation like this. It could predict how people thought. Could save lives. Could save Jess.

“General?” One of Ian’s employees called him over to speak with Kramer, leaving me and Ian alone.

“You know Jess wouldn’t do this,” I said. “I’m getting her out, but I won’t be a part of proving her guilty.”

Ian shook his head. “I know. Get her out and recover the data. I didn’t call you in to haul Jess to jail, and I would never let that happen. But that’s a bridge we’ll have to cross later.”

Good. We were on the same page.

I nodded and headed back over to the table with the files so I could memorize more details. I didn’t have much time.

Jess stared up at me from her photo, and even though I should be looking at everything else, I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture. I’d loved her my entire life. She’d crashed into my world when she was four years old, and we’d been together ever since. It had always been the two of us.

I breathed around the heaviness in my chest and through the fear. She was out there and in danger. And from more than just the kidnappers, it sounded like.

Jess, what have you gotten yourself into?