Hard Core Law (Texas Rangers: Elite Troop) Read online

  Backpacks on, they ran to meet her.

  “Are we going home now?” Sage asked.

  “First we have to play hide-and-seek. You can’t giggle or tell anybody where we’re at. Okay?”

  Both their heads bobbed. Sage jumped up and down, smiled then got Jackson excited as well. “We get to go home. We get to see Daddy.” They said in unison, jumping again.

  “Please guys, it’s really important for us to be quiet. Shh.” She placed a finger across her lips and lowered her voice. “Quiet as church mice. Ready?”

  They hurried downstairs, where she used the keys again to get out the front door. Austin Avenue?

  They were in downtown Waco? It must be the wee hours of the morning, because this was an area of town that was open until two. She hadn’t heard any party or loud music. No wonder they’d filled the room with toys to keep the kids occupied and silent.

  Tracey ran. She hoisted Jackson to her hip, holding tight to Sage’s little hand. “Come on, baby, I know you’re tired, but we’ve got to run. You can do it.”

  Where to?

  They had to be gone—out of view. Fast. Before someone discovered they’d left their room. She tried the sandwich shop next door.

  Locked.

  They’d all be locked. Everything closed in this part of town. There was nothing to throw at a window. No alarm she could set off without the kidnappers looking out their window and seeing her.

  So close.

  They were so close to freedom. If they could just find somebody...

  Nothing but parking lots, a closed sandwich shop, more parking lots and the ALICO Building. Maybe there was somebody still there.

  It was the dead of night and there were no headlights. No one around to wave down for help. They made it across Austin Avenue and then again across Fifth Street. A door banged open. She dared to look back for a split second. It was them.

  “Over there,” she heard one of the men say.

  “Sage, honey, put your arms around my neck.” She’d run for their lives carrying the twins. But where?

  The parking garage would be open. She ran between the structures. Garage to her left, fire escape to her right. Fire escape? Then what? Climb twenty-two stories outside the tallest building in Waco with twin four-year-olds?

  No. All she had to do was make it up one flight before they saw her. The building was split-level—they could hide on the level that was a parking lot. It was more logical to choose the garage door. She couldn’t leave their fate to the off chance someone left their car unlocked and they could hide inside.

  What then? Blow the horn until their captors broke the window and carried them back to their downtown dungeon?

  It would have to be the fire escape. She set a lethargic Jackson on the stair side of the fire escape, helped Sage over and climbed over herself. They were between buildings where the voices of the men chasing them echoed. She didn’t know if it could be done, but it was their only chance.

  “Quiet as a mouse, kidlets, we’ve got to keep quiet. Go ahead and start climbing, sweetheart.” She adjusted Jackson on her back moving as fast as she could behind Sage.

  One foot, then another. Four-year-old legs couldn’t take stairs two at a time. Neither could a twenty-six-year-old with a four-year-old on her back. If she wasn’t scared of falling down, she would pick up Sage and make the climb with both of them.

  The shouts changed. No longer echoes from the street, they were directly below them. Tracey stopped Sage and slowly—soundlessly—pulled her to the side of the building. Maybe they’d get lucky. Maybe neither of the men would look up. Maybe they’d take the logical path into the garage.

  Maybe luck was on their side. Looking by barely tilting her head, she watched as the men took off into the other building.

  “More quietly than ever, baby girl. We can do this.”

  It took time. The one flight was actually a little more than that. Their luck ran out. Just as they made it to the roof so did the kidnappers. They yelled out to each other or at someone else, she couldn’t be certain.

  They were on the lower roof. She set the twins next to a door and looked around for something to pry it open. No junk in the corner. Nothing just lying around to pick up and bang against metal. She heard the men taking the metal fire escape two steps at a time.

  Running to the Fifth Street side of the roof, she yelled, “Help! Someone help us!” There weren’t any headlights, no one walking, nothing.

  Then to the parking lot side toward the river. Someone might be hanging out closer to the water, but it was too far away. “Help! Somebody. Anybody.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The kids were cuddled together. All Tracey could do was join them. They couldn’t tackle the twenty stories of fire escape stairs. Even if they did, there wasn’t a helicopter waiting to whisk them off to safety.

  The men chasing them heard her cries for help. She heard their shoes slam against the metal steps, then across the roof. She braced herself for punches or kicks. The repercussions of running away. Maybe now. Maybe later. But these men would strike out. She’d protect the kids.

  She repeated the promise that they’d be all right as the men both angrily kicked her legs. These men would lose. Josh would find them. They would lose.

  “Stop it! Don’t hurt her!” the twins yelled, still wedged between her and the wall.

  Their screams echoed in her ears as they were pulled from her arms. One of the men jerked her up by her hair while the other had a hand on each twin. They struggled. She could barely stand.

  He dragged her to the edge of the building, threatening to throw her over the side. His hands went around the back of her neck, pushed her to the ledge. She dropped to her knees.

  “I wish I could get rid of you,” he spitefully whispered. “I’d leave you on that sidewalk along with the jerk who let you escape. Did you hit him with a stuffed unicorn?” He shoved her forward into the concrete barrier. “Get up and get hold of one of them brats.”

  Limping down the fire escape, she wondered if they’d care that their friend might die from the insulin injection. She carried Jackson, and poor Sage was in the arms of the man to her right.

  The men constantly looked over their shoulders, but they weren’t followed. No one drove by. No police were in sight. They weren’t gentle, especially the blond who held a gun instead of a child and shoved her every third step she took.

  “He might just kill us for this. If anybody sees, we’re dead. We need to get out of here, fast.”

  “So we don’t tell him, right? He’d just get angry,” the man carrying Sage answered. “She sure ain’t going to tell him. Mack will never know they got loose. Besides, we got ’em back, didn’t we? And we still have another twenty before we’re supposed to leave and...you know.”

  Leave?

  Yes, he’d cocked his head toward her. So what did he mean? Leave them or leave with them, taking them to a new location? Or maybe they planned to leave them here after killing them?

  Once again she wished that she’d been brave or lucky enough to leave earlier, before the bars on the street had closed. Food trucks were normally one of the last things to leave the now-empty parking lot.

  “You need to call 911 for your friend,” Tracey told the men, trying to gauge their humanity. “He’s very ill and needs emergency care”

  “So he’s sick. He’ll get over it.” Gun in hand, he shoved her through the outer door.

  Would they call 911? If she admitted why he needed help they’d know for certain that she’d planned her escape instead of taking advantage of their guard being sick. Ultimately, she didn’t want the weight of his death on her shoulders.

  “I injected him with insulin and he’s going into hypoglycemic shock.” They ignored her as they entered the building they’d just escaped
from. “Can’t you drop him at the clinic with a note? He may die.”

  “That’s on your head, lady. You’re the one that gave it to him and he was stupid enough to let ya.”

  They pushed her into the toy room, Sage right behind her. The one holding the gun stuck the barrel under her chin and moved close to her face. His minty breath a stark contrast to the threats. “You listen to me, lady. Stay in line or we’re getting rid of you no matter what Mack says.”

  Then bolted the door.

  “Oh my!” She cried out before realizing she needed to control herself for the kids.

  “What’s wrong, Trace Trace?” Sage asked.

  Jackson didn’t say anything. He went to the mattress, saw it was full with the young man she’d injected and lay down next to the wall using a teddy bear for a pillow.

  “When can we go home?”

  “Soon, honey. Soon.” She pulled the little girl into her arms and rocked her by shifting her weight from foot to foot. Her long hair was tangled again. She’d finger-comb it after breakfast.

  “Did Daddy forget about us?”

  “Oh no, baby. He loves you and is doing everything he can to get you back to him.”

  It took only a few minutes to get Sage to drift off to sleep. She adjusted the children on a blanket and used the secondhand animals to make them comfortable and feel safe.

  The young guard wasn’t comatose. He roused a little, making her heart a little lighter. He was clammy with sweat, so she used the water from the water bottle to dampen a couple of doll dresses and wiped his brow, trying to make him more comfortable. She would never be able to do that again knowing that the outcome might mean somebody would die.

  Sitting still in the predawn hours she remembered something odd about their captors...she knew what they looked like. While chasing her, they’d left their masks behind. She could identify them. This development couldn’t be good.

  It was her fault for trying to escape. But she had been right about telling Josh the whiskey was in the center of the house. At least she knew they were definitely in the heart of Waco. She prayed that he’d be able to find them.

  That line was getting old. Of course she’d hope for that. But she couldn’t focus on it, either. She’d do her job and think of another way out of this room. Her life wasn’t a series of rescues.

  She’d walked away from all that when she turned twenty-one. “Heck, I even changed my name to avoid it.” Pick yourself up and get your head on straight, Tracella Sharon Cassidy Bass. That was her grandmother’s voice talking from her overly pink bedroom. Ha! Years ago Grandma Sweetie had declared that her pieces of advice would come in handy. But Tracey bet even Sweetie wouldn’t have imagined this scenario.

  She looked at the man in the corner. He was just a man now. Not a creep, not an abductor with a gun—just a young man who needed help. No one deserved to die. And she’d help as best she could. She turned the water bottle upside down and got the last drops onto the cloth.

  After she’d cooled their guard’s forehead, she decided to talk with the other two guards. She knocked on the door trying not to wake up the kids. Then she knocked a little more forcibly.

  “What?” one of them shouted through the wood.

  “We need more water.”

  “Not now.”

  “Even another bottle for your friend?” She tapped on the door, attempting to get an answer.

  “Lady, you need to shut up so we can figure this out.”

  “There’s water in the tan bag you took from me.” They’d even taken the kids’ backpacks with their toys.

  “Yeah, like we’re giving that back.”

  “You have to. It has Jackson’s insulin and supplies.”

  “Isn’t that what you stuck in Toby—I mean Mack? One of them insulin needles, right? And you said he could die. So no way. I ain’t letting you have it back. Needles are dangerous, man.”

  There was arguing. Raised voices. Lowered voices.

  “Don’t matter anyway. We’re supposed to head out.”

  “Are you...are you leaving us? Please unlock the door before—” She tripped backward as the door was pushed open. The gun took her by surprise. When it was pointed at her head, street gangster style, she could only raise her hands and say, “Don’t shoot.”

  “We ain’t shooting you, lady. But we don’t trust you neither. Get the kids. We’re leaving.”

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “Does it matter?” the blond holding the gun in her face said.

  “To the airport. He dead yet?” asked the other as he hurried to the corner where the kids were.

  “Shut up, you idiot,” the blond man insisted. “First you use Toby’s name. And dammit, thanks to him,” he pointed at the ill man, “she’s seen our faces.”

  She remembered what Josh had said. The kidnappers would feel safe as long as their identities were secret. Would they kill her and the kids now that they weren’t? “He, uh, still needs a doctor, but I think he’ll be okay.”

  “That’s good I guess.”

  “No it’s not,” said the blond, waving the gun like an extension of talking with his hands. “What if somebody finds him? What if he talks?”

  “Do we shoot him then?”

  “What? You can’t— He’s unarmed and helpless.” Tracey would have pleaded more but the men looked at each other as if she was crazy.

  Maybe she was, since they were obviously ready to shoot her and the kids. Now they were going to taking them to a new place? Or could it possibly be...

  “Is this an exchange at the airport? Who told you to bring us?”

  “We don’t do names, lady. We just do what we’re told, and then we’re gone.”

  “So there’s no reason to kill him.” She pointed to the unconscious guy. “You can just leave him here.”

  “We don’t have time, man. If you want to plug him, go ahead. My hands are full.” The second man pulled a sleepy Jackson into his arms.

  The blond one lifted Sage. She squirmed and pushed at his shoulders. “I want Trace Trace.”

  Then she began to cry. For real, not a fake cry to get her way. She was genuinely scared of the man who held her and had a gun pressed against her back.

  “Here, let me take her.” Tracey held out her arms and Sage threw herself backward, nearly falling between them.

  The children were old enough to understand guns. Even at four and a half the twins knew about tension and that guns were dangerous. Their father was a Texas Ranger and had weapons in the house—inside a lockbox and gun cabinet—but they’d already had lectures about how they were weapons and weapons were dangerous.

  Sage had watched the gun being waved around. She’d heard the discussion about shooting someone. She could tell things weren’t right no matter how many toys were in the room.

  “Let’s get gone,” the blond said. “Mack’s expecting us to be there.”

  Tracey didn’t want to draw their attention to the man in the corner, so she grabbed a toy bear for Sage to latch onto and left their backpacks. There were spare crackers and juice in the emergency kit that could tide them over until they received food.

  They had almost reached the back door when she asked the blond, “The tan bag with his supplies. Where did it go?”

  “Get in the van.” He shoved her forward to the back stoop.

  “We have to have that bag.”

  “You ain’t jabbin’ me with anything.”

  “No, we can’t go without it. Jackson needs it.”

  “Should have thought ’bout that before you made Toby sick.” The second guy put Jackson in her arms after she put Sage in the van.

  “Where do I sit?” Sage asked, following with a huge sniff from her tears.

  No seats. The panel van had nothing but a
smelly old horsehair blanket.

  “What an adventure, Sage. You and your new bear friend can help me hold Jackson.”

  She put the bear on the metal floor and Sage sat cross-legged next to it, then dropped her head onto her hands. Jackson woke up, rubbed his eyes and moved next to the bear, imitating his sister. Sage pursed her lips and Jackson mimicked or answered. Sometimes the twin language was hard to interpret.

  The van door closed and they pulled out of the parking lot. It was still before dawn on Sunday morning. Too early for anyone to have noticed them being moved along by gunpoint. A lot of people went to church in Waco, but not this early.

  Even if someone saw them sitting on the floor of the panel van, no one would think anything suspicious. All they could do was cooperate.

  “Trace Trace?” Jackson nudged her leg. “I’m tired and hungry. Where are my snacks?”

  “We’ll have to wait for breakfast, big boy.”

  Jackson threw himself backward and stiffened his body. His small fist hit her bruised jaw. She clamped down on the long “ouch” that wanted to escape. It wasn’t his fault and she refused to upset him more. When his blood sugar began to get low he became angry and quarrelsome. It was one of the first clues that his levels needed to be adjusted.

  “Jackson’s always ’posed to have crackers,” Sage told her. “He’s starting to get a little mean, Trace Trace.”

  “I know, honey, but they got left with the toys.”

  Sage leaned closer putting her hand close to her mouth, indicating she didn’t want the men to hear her. “Is that man really going to die?”

  “No, baby. His sugar’s a little low right now, but he’s going to be fine.”

  “That’s good.”

  Tracey held tightly to the sides of the van and the kids held tightly to her. Fortunately, it wasn’t a long ride to the Waco Regional Airport. This place wasn’t huge by any means. She’d flown home from here several times before she’d turned twenty-one.