Nanny for the SEALs by Cassie Cole

50

Rogan

Asher and I jumped into my SUV and peeled out of the film set. When I reached the roadblock, I blared on the horn to get the cops to move the barricade out of the way so I didn’t have to slow down.

“They’re on the six-oh-five,” Asher was telling Brady on the radio. “Looks like they’re merging onto the two-ten.”

“I’m still on the ten,” Brady replied. “Where do you think they’re heading?”

“They just merged onto the two-ten heading east. Either they’re on their way to Vegas, or they’re going to cut up into the mountains.”

“I’ll swing north. Might be able to get ahead of them.”

“Good plan,” Asher said. “We’re pursuing from behind.”

Rather than take the interstate, I followed back roads to the north-east. I blared my horn and ran through red lights. I would’ve killed for a police cruiser just then.

“Where are they now?” I asked.

Asher frowned at his screen. “Still on the two-ten. They haven’t moved much in the last minute. I think they’re stuck in traffic.”

“Good,” I said. “This is the only time I’ll be grateful for LA traffic.”

Asher made some other phone calls while I drove. Cooper was being taken to the hospital, so he had Lopez and the other agents still on-set speak to the police.

“Why don’t they believe you?” Asher was asking. “Oh, that is just ridiculous!”

“What?” I demanded.

Asher covered the phone receiver. “The on-set police aren’t cooperating. Lopez thinks they’re upset that we didn’t make them aware of the bait-and-switch plan with Amirah and Heather.”

“Everyone has a fucking complex,” I said, gripping the wheel tighter. We hadn’t told the on-set police about it because we didn’t know who we could trust. Only a few people knew the truth.

And now it was biting us in the ass.

“We’ll just have to save her ourselves,” I said.

Asher hung up the phone call and sucked in a breath. “Um. That’s going to be a lot tougher now… The GPS signal just went dead. They must have found the button to disable it.”

“Fuck!” I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. “You have the last known location?”

“I do. Six miles ahead, still on the two-ten.”

“Tell Brady,” I replied. “Thankfully, the food truck is easily recognizable. We should be able to see it from a distance.”

“Unless they’re switching vehicles,” Asher pointed out.

I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and tried not to think about that.

I drove like a maniac as we neared the truck’s last known location. I was on a service road that ran parallel to the two-ten for a while, then swung up to the on-ramp. The interstate was a parking lot: nobody was moving eastbound. So I merged all the way over to the left lane, then passed everyone on the shoulder. People flipped me off as I passed, but as long as they stayed out of my way, I didn’t care.

If anything happens to Heather, I’ll never forgive myself.

“Coming up on the last known location,” Asher said.

“Keep your eyes peeled.”

I slowed down while driving on the shoulder. A food truck would have been recognizable in the endless traffic, but there were a lot of tall semi-trucks that blocked our view. Asher craned his neck and leaned out the window to look as we passed each one, just in case the food truck was obscured behind one.

“We should have seen them by now,” Asher said. “Maybe they merged off.”

“Or switched vehicles,” I said. “Goddamnit!”

Despair swirled in my gut like a tornado. I tasted bile at the back of my throat, intense and coppery. I realized in that moment that Heather Hart wasn’t just some woman nannying the children. She wasn’t merely someone I had a physical relationship with, even though that’s what we pretended it was when it started. She was something special to me.

I loved her.

The realization blossomed like a firework, intense and warm, and then disappeared. It didn’t matter that I loved her, because I had never told her so. I had put her in danger, and had failed to protect her.

And now I’ve lost her.

“Brady,” Asher said on the radio, “do you see anything from the westbound lane?”

“Nothing, but it’s tough to see from this side. I’m going forty-five in the left lane and people are passing me at a hundred. Fuck, you don’t think they exited, do…”

He trailed off, then suddenly shouted.

“Ah hah! I see the truck! Same yellow exterior, confirmed. Mile marker forty-six, just past Haven Avenue.”

Asher looked at a road sign above us. “That’s a quarter mile ahead!”

“It’s in the far right lane,” Brady said on the radio. “I’m pulling over in the westbound lane. Some fucker on his phone better not hit me.”

“There’s a gap between the eastbound and westbound lanes,” Asher said.

“I’ll jump it.”

I touched my radio microphone. “Wait until we get there.”

“Then drive faster. I’m not waiting long. Not while that maniac has Heather.”

I scanned ahead while flying up the shoulder. A semi-truck merged lanes, and then suddenly I saw it: the yellow food truck, in the far right lane.

“Rogan!” Asher pointed.

There was a disabled vehicle on the shoulder ahead of me. I slammed on my brakes, skidding to a stop behind him. The car next to me, a red Corvette, pulled forward so I couldn’t merge over.

“That’s what you get for driving on the shoulder, asshole!” the driver shouted at me. “We’re all in the same traffic as you!”

I was blocked in, and the food truck was about a hundred feet ahead of us. Traffic was crawling forward.

“Fuck this,” I said. “Pursuing on foot.”

I jumped out of the SUV and rounded the front. The man in the Corvette next to us showed us both his middle fingers.

“Yeah, you want a piece of this, tough guy? Come on and I’ll give you a…” He trailed off as I unholstered my P226 pistol and held it at my side. Suddenly the guy ducked down in his seat and rolled up his window.

I weaved through the cars toward the food truck. Asher appeared next to me with something in his hand. A pair of thermal goggles.

“I think there’s more than two inside,” he said.

I waved for the goggles, and he tossed them to me. I held them to my face while striding forward. The world instantly became a series of green and orange blurs. Cooler objects showed up as green, and heat appeared as shades of yellow, orange, and red. There was a blob of orange on the food truck’s muffler, some green around the edges, and the interior was yellowish orange.

Then the food truck merged lanes, which caused its body to turn toward me. That gave me a sideways view of its length. There was a blob of orange driving the truck, and two distinct heat spots in the back. One was lower, and the other was higher.

“One person driving, and two in the back,” I said on the radio. “Heather is sitting, I think.”

Brady grunted in response. “Two kidnappers?”

“Or a second hostage, in addition to Heather,” Asher suggested.

I continued striding toward the truck. “Negative. One is restrained, and the other is moving back and forth. Two hostiles.”

“Son of a bitch,” Brady said.

I felt equally shocked. Stalkers were usually loners. They rarely worked together. Thanks to the presence of two men at Amirah’s house the night I was attacked, I was certain that meant they were goons hired by Heimdall.

I was so, so wrong.

There was no time to worry about it now. We were fifty feet away from the food truck. We had worked together countless times before, and Asher instinctively began spreading out to the right side, while I took the left.

I spotted Brady’s truck in the westbound lane, parked on the shoulder. A moment later I saw him standing next to the edge. “Cover us from there, Brady.”

“Negative,” he said, taking a few steps back. “I’ll be there in a flash.”

I peered over the cement barrier. There was a ten-foot gap between the eastbound and westbound lanes, with at least a fifty foot drop to the ground below.

“You won’t make it,” I insisted.

After knowing him for so long, nothing Brady did should have surprised me. But I was still shocked as he sprinted at the barrier, planted one foot on the top of it, and then hurled himself through the air. He seemed weightless for a moment, legs running through nothing and arms flailing. He wasn’t going to make it. I was certain of it.

But then he extended his foot, landing it on the eastbound barrier and continuing on this side at a sprint. “I hope one of you got that on camera! That’s going to be on the ESPN Top Ten tomorrow!”

Brady was slightly ahead of the food truck, and the kidnappers must have seen his acrobatic display. Tires squealed as the food truck took off, slamming between stationary cars and knocking others out of the way.

Asher and I shared a look, then took off at a dead sprint after the truck. We both knew what the other was thinking. No matter what happened, we were going to prioritize rescuing Heather.

Even if it meant sacrificing ourselves.