On Thin Ice (Special Ops) Read online

  “I don’t know why they’re still out there. I can venture a guess. You see the task force delivered what they thought was a deadly blow. It took four years but they rounded up the leaders and the minions. They thought they had everybody. Clearly we missed some. Anyway, once that was done the governor took credit for the task force and gave a little to the mayor while they did the press conferences. She wanted reelection obviously. But once the bad guys were gone she demanded the task force be dismantled and any leftover funds be turned in.”

  “Turned in to whom?”

  Nathan laughed. “Her of course…by way of several other arenas but we all know she pocketed it. Her campaign got a burst of funds that year. They all knew where it came from, but nobody crossed her and kept their job so people kept quiet.”

  “And these guys?”

  “Well I think maybe they hadn’t gotten everybody. They were probably either lurking out there in one of the other regions or setting up shop and getting ready for a comeback. Now here is where I think we have a problem.” He turned down a long stretch of road. “The reporter who interviewed Miss Bowman was actually the son of one of the older officers of the task force. His father died about a year ago in a car accident.”

  “I see. So you think they shot up everybody to kill the son and get the girl?”

  “Well at first we didn’t link the son’s death to it you know. Why after all this time when his father was already dead? But then we took a look at some things and we realized that a few of the officers on the task force, over the past three years, have either ended up dead, or somebody they loved has. They’re all in different parts of Alaska so we wouldn’t have noticed that you know.”

  Jet knew where this conversation was going and basically it led to the fact that they wanted more than the money. They wanted revenge. He was going to have to get Akira out of there because even if Aaron paid the ransom they were definitely going to kill her.

  “Do you know who any of these guys are?”

  “No. We don’t know exactly where they are either, but they’re still here somewhere. They’re either underground or up in the mountains. I think that one over there,” he pointed off in the distance. “It’s close enough to handle today’s attack, but far enough away not to be reached too quickly. Plus it’s big, so we wouldn’t even really know where to start, how low or how high you know. They haven’t left Alaska by air because we’re monitoring outbound flights. They haven’t left by sea because we have been monitoring the docks. They’re here somewhere.”

  If they were still here, and even if they weren’t, he was going to find them. He didn’t care where they were hiding; finding things and people is what he did. He was going to find her, kill them, and bring her home. She would be safe again. He wouldn’t rest until he made sure of that. His first priority was getting her out of wherever they were holding her, everything else came second.

  “So how do you know Miss Bowman?”

  “I know her father,” he stated.

  “Well we got the call after you were apparently already in the air, so I would say he hadn’t asked you to come.”

  Jet knew exactly what the man was trying to find out and he wasn’t taking the bait. He wasn’t going to give him any ounce of food for the sound bite he was looking to grab with any nosy reporters. “I have been friends with the family for a while now. I was watching the interview with a friend and I knew I had to come and help.” Nothing he said was a lie. He had been friends with the family; at least he would say they thought of him as one. In an odd way he thought of them as friends too; maybe Akira more than the others because he had spent time emailing with her on personal matters.

  “Ah, a lady friend. I hope she wasn’t angry that you had to leave.”

  Jet remained silent for a few seconds. He wasn’t with a lady friend, but allowing the man to think that he was didn’t bother him any. Why else would a grown man be watching figure skating or anything involving it? That’s probably what Nathan was wondering. “I’m skilled at finding people,” he said. “All of my friends know I’ll jump through fire and crawl through hell for them.” Both statements were true. The people who were his true friends knew who he was, what he did and that if they ever needed him he would drop everything to be there for them.

  “Well from the call we got it would sound as if you’re good with guns too.”

  Jet was quickly growing tired of Nathan’s probing for information. “I know a thing or two.” He kept a hint of a lighter tone in his voice even though his mood was growing darker by the second. He saw no need to converse about his skills. They should be talking about Akira, the hostage takers, and what information they had already deduced from the crime scene.

  “Have any demands come in yet?”

  “Not here. And from what I have heard the FBI in Texas have yet to connect with Mr. Bowman. He was in San Antonio, but left abruptly and he hasn’t been home. I got a call about fifteen minutes before you landed that the wife won’t even open the front gates for them.”

  Jet had a feeling Aaron was already at the Squadron headquarters. If he was there then Alex already had him prepped for how to deal with the Feds and the call that would come in. The last thing they needed was federal agents messing up the chances of him getting to Akira.

  He waited until they arrived at the station and he met up with the team of men and two women investigating the case before quietly excusing himself under the pretense of just checking in at home. Nathan thought he was calling his “lady friend,” as he felt the need to tell everybody. He really wanted to check in with Alex and find out if there was something Aaron had told him that would help. He needed him to run some information for him as well.

  “I’ve landed and I’m nesting,” he said the moment Alex answered the phone.

  “Jet, it’s good to hear your voice. I have Aaron here with me.”

  “Hold the speaker,” Jet told him because he didn’t want to say what he needed to say with Aaron listening in just yet. He recapped Nathan’s conversation for Alex. He received the standard response that didn’t betray the sense of urgency in this case. “Go ahead and put me on speaker if you need to.”

  “All right,” Alex said. “I have you on speaker so you can talk with Aaron too.”

  “Thank you for smoothing the way here,” Jet decided to get the formality of a thank you out the way first.

  “We haven’t gotten a call…” His voice trailed off as a phone started ringing.

  “Answer it on speaker so Jet and I can hear it too,” he heard Alex say. That was also his cue to put his phone on mute to keep the background noises out of the makeshift conference call.

  “Aaron Bowman,” he said as he waited for the person on the other end to speak. He knew it wasn’t his wife calling from her cell phone because Kira had set a special ring tone for him that would alert him to which of the two ladies in his family were calling. For Sakura, Kira had set a snippet from Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata because that was the song playing at the symphony he was attending when he first caught site of her. He couldn’t even remember why he was at the event. He certainly wasn’t in Japan to attend anything dealing with music, but there he sat and there she was sitting in a seat on the balcony section right next to his. He didn’t know how he hadn’t looked over and seen her earlier in the program, but he hadn’t. The moment he had let his eyes drift over her way he saw her and he couldn’t tear his eyes from her. She must have felt him watching her, admiring her really, because she looked at him and the connection he felt was so strong that he was sure she must have felt it too. She had been sitting next to an older gentleman, one he hoped was her father and not her date, but one could never tell.

  When the first interlude came he watched as she stood from her chair. He knew she was going to go out into the hall and so he casually did the same. There was where he first spoke to her and there is where he fell in love. Kira had always loved the story of their meeting so she had programmed his phone to play their “special
” song. Unfortunately, for her own song she had programmed in Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. And as often as Kira called him he couldn’t escape the tune. At first he was incredibly embarrassed whenever he found himself in a meeting and the tune started blaring. He could recount the looks on the men’s faces. Eventually he reminded himself to put the phone on vibrate mode. With his “cool” phone, as she had called it; she was able to program in a different vibration setting for her mother and herself too. “You’ll never have to wonder if you should answer the phone because you’ll always know it’s us.” He preferred his phone on ring, not vibrate, but she was adamant about him leaving the ring tone she had provided. She had skated to that tune in one of her competitions and it held great sentimental value for her. She never told him why, just that it was important. For his daughter he would do anything, give anything, just to make sure she was happy and safe. Whatever the men who took her wanted they could have, just so long as they returned his daughter to him.

  “I have something you want,” the thick Russian accent assaulted his ears. Aaron tried to place the voice. It’s not as if he didn’t have dealings with people all over the world. His business was based in America, but he was more of an international businessman. He had companies all over the globe. Could this be somebody angry with him about work?

  “Let her go,” he finally said.

  The man laughed. “Because of you my brother died. I’ll call you again to let you know what you will have to give me if you ever want to see her again.” And with those words the line went dead.

  “He hung up,” Aaron said absently. He had heard the man’s words and being a businessman he understood something he hadn’t said. Reading his opponents is what had kept him on top of his game and he had read this man easily. He had said “if you ever want to see her again,” not “if you want her back alive,” like he was sure so many hostage takers would have said. The idea would have been to at least give him hope, but the man’s words were not the words that inspired hope.

  “Jet,” Aaron couldn’t lose her.

  “I heard it, Aaron.”

  “Bring her home alive. I don’t care what you have to do, or what you need to do it, bring her home; please?”

  “She’s coming home, Aaron. I don’t make promises in these types of situation, but I am making this promise I will not lose her and neither will you.”

  Aaron looked up and his eyes connected with Alex’s eyes. Alex gave him a knowing nod. Perhaps he should have seen it. He had thought Kira might have had a crush at one point, but Jet had never given him the impression he was interested in her on a romantic level. He couldn’t think of a better man for her. “Then you’ll bring her home for us,” he said giving his silent blessing for the relationship, if there were one.

  “Call me as soon as you get the demands. I’m going to work this from my end.”

  With a few more words Jet disconnected their call.

  “How long?” He needed to know how long the feelings had been there.

  “I think your daughter has been in love with him from the moment she met him. Jet’s a bit more difficult. He has issues with the age difference, or at least he did. He’s been fighting the feelings. He even tried to set her up with me,” Alex shook his head. “But I think he’s wanted to be more than her friend for a while now—even if he didn’t think it possible. Does it bother you?”

  “No. He saved my life. He’s an honest, good and hardworking man. Sakura is definitely fond of him.” Aaron laughed. “Does my wife know about this?”

  Alex shrugged. “If she’s as observant as I am when it comes to other people I’d say she had a suspicion Kira was in love. Jet’s a hard read for anybody. Years of working with him and sometimes even I can’t figure out what he’s thinking.”

  “If he can bring her back they don’t need to worry about my blessing the union.”

  “When,” Alex corrected him. “When he brings her back. Trust me when I say that Jet won’t rest until he finds her and gets her safely to you. Out of all of us I think he’s the best at this. And when his heart is vested there’s no stopping the fury the man can release on the enemy. She’s coming home. We have to believe that.”

  “She’s coming home,” Aaron said softly. “What will you need from me to help?”

  “Probably a plane once he finds her. We’re going to need a safe way to get them home.”

  “I have my private jet. I’ll make sure it’s fueled and ready to go. My pilot is a loyal man. He’s been with my company for the last fifteen years. I trust him.”

  “Okay. I’ll let you know. Just keep the plane and your pilot on standby.”

  “Anything else I can do?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “You’re going to go home and be there with your wife. It’s closing time here anyway so I’ll forward the office phones to my cell in case any calls come through. I’ll stay at your place tonight in case anything happens.”

  “Okay.” He would feel better having him close at hand anyway. He didn’t know when the call would come in again, but he knew it would and he needed to be ready to deal with it when it did. Something about Alex just kept him calm and rational. The man just seemed to know the right things to say and he had the most calming demeanor about him. He was young, but he was good at what he did. He would bet he kept the hostages he rescued calm too.

  “Okay. I have the phone forwarded so let me make sure things are locked up and we can go.”

  Aaron nodded. He needed to see Sakura. He hadn’t gone to her when he got the call. He was sure she was probably trying hard to keep it together, to not imagine the worse possible scenario of what was happening to their daughter. She needed him to be there with her. They could share their strength and survive this together. He had his wife, but Kira had no one. He hoped she was surviving this, that she wasn’t harmed. God, he needed her to be okay.

  Chapter Five

  I don’t know,” Nathan assured him. “They all consider themselves brothers I think.”

  Jet’s frustration was growing. What exactly were these cops doing all day; sitting around and hoping for a breadcrumb? They needed to work harder. Since they wouldn’t, he would have to do this on his own. The weapons he had access to were pretty much standard. He would have brought something heavier with him. In fact, he would have expected them to have offered him access to the bigger weapons they should have on hand. He wasn’t worried; he knew somebody he could go to in order to get what he wanted. Now all he needed was a car.

  “I need to check on some things,” he stood and clipped his phone to his waist. “Is there a car I can borrow?”

  “Oh I’ll take you,” Nathan grinned.

  “No, that’s okay. I think it’s best if you stay here and lead the search. I shouldn’t be too long.” Jet noticed how happy Nathan seemed to be with the idea that he had just implied he was the leader. Nathan wasn’t leading anything. He had to answer to somebody too, but he was trying to coordinate with authority and that told Jet he was a man more interested in his fifteen minutes than actually finding Akira. With a man like that it was easy to just stroke his ego with words to keep him happy and out of his way.

  “Oh sure, good point. Take the green truck out back. It’s the only truck back there so you can’t miss it.” He tossed him a set of keys.

  Jet went out back and found the truck instantly. Nathan had been right. There was no way to miss the F150 that looked as if it had a poor man’s date at a paint shop. The army green color paint job was so botched that he could still see hints of white from the underlying paint. Well he wasn’t looking for beauty in the vehicle. He would take the beast so long as it worked better than it looked. One turn of the ignition told him that while the outside was as ugly as molding food, the heart of the beast was in pristine condition.

  He drove the back roads, pulling over only once to disconnect the GPS tracking system so he couldn’t be followed. He was working with the cops, but that didn’t mean he wanted to give them all his knowledge. He
knew, at the end of the day, he was going to be the man to go get her because anybody else wouldn’t have the same concern for her life that he had for it. He wouldn’t risk her life for their glory.

  He hadn’t seen his contact in years, but he knew the location was still the same. With hopes the guns were still on hand too. Guns, hiking gear and everything else he would need to scale that mountain—provided that was the actual spot the bad guys were using to hide out. Plus he needed information on the past and much like Natalia, Henri was the master of finding information.

  Jet pulled up the drive and immediately spotted Henri doing target practice. He got out the truck and noticed how Henri lowered the gun she had in her hand. “I’m friend and you know it.”

  “Jet Jackson,” Henri laughed. “Now what adventure brings you to my neck of the world? Something good I hope.” She wrapped her arms around him and he hugged her back. The woman was all legs, and breasts, and delicate curves too. Actually, she was a total package of what his friend York had called “hotness.” She was an even six feet, perfectly proportioned and in killer shape. She also had silky raven hair that came down to her waistline and the most gorgeous blue eyes he had seen on a woman in a long time. Henri may look sweet as pie and the damsel in distress type, but there was no way in the world anybody, not even a skilled martial artists, would willingly put themselves on her bad side. She had expert status in three different forms of martial arts. She could shoot like a sniper. She could use knives, swords, whatever she needed, and she could run fast. She could almost keep up with him, and that was saying a lot given the fact that he could actually beat some of the Olympic running records.