Saving Amber - Zoe Dawson Page 0,64

to stay calm, Tristan pulled out his cell but saw immediately that there was no signal. He debated going back down the mountain and getting help, but he was afraid to leave Amber. He had no idea what they had planned for her, but he was damned happy she was still alive. He shoved the phone back into his pocket, blindsided that Chief Werner was involved in whatever had happened to James. There was only one way to save Amber and it meant letting himself get caught. Deciding that he couldn’t take the chance on leaving her, he went to the corner of the cabin. There was no one there. He crept forward but froze when he felt the barrel of a gun poke into the center of his back.

“Don’t move.”

Now all he had to do was survive.

And, hell, he was a master at it.

Chapter Thirteen

As soon as Chris landed, he checked his cell and saw that he’d missed a call from Tristan, but when he tried to reach him, the call went right to voice mail. He called Colonel Jacobs’s office and talked to Corporal Morgan, who was very concerned. He told Chris to come straight to headquarters as soon as he hit the base. The colonel would be waiting.

Beau was getting the rental while Vin and Chris grabbed the luggage. As soon as Beau got to the entrance, they loaded up the vehicle and started out for Pickel Meadows. Chris had not been as worried about an agent since Vin’s fiancé Skylar Baang had been hunted by her Russian kidnappers and Vin had gone off the grid, and when Beau and his now fiancé, Coast Guard Investigative Service Agent Kinley Cooper had their harrowing mission go terribly wrong in Cuba.

Now Amber was missing, and Chris blamed himself for sending her here. But the case was tailor-made for her with her sharp mind and her attention to detail. True to form, she had rooted out what appeared to be a conspiracy.

Vin fidgeted in the backseat. “Can you stop driving like an old lady, Jerrott?”

Beau swore softly in Cajun French and glanced at his coworker in the rearview. “I’m not driving like an old lady. I’m going seventy-five. It just feels slow because we’re worried about Amber.” He swore again, his voice seriously lethal when he said, “If anything happens to her…”

“That dirtbag’s life is over,” Vin said, just as deadly.

Silently, Chris agreed as they sped down the highway toward MWTC. “Beau push it to ninety. I’ll take care of the highway patrol,” he said as he pulled out his cell.

The door burst open and someone shoved a man through. Amber was still disoriented from being hit on the head, thrown into that sick animal Garza’s trunk and left in there while he’d handled Dr. Thompson’s murder—one she was sure he’d committed. She was still reeling from what Garza had told her they planned to do to her and was trying to manage her fear.

Then she recognized the man and suddenly, against all the despair of her predicament, she had hope. “Tristan!”

He looked up at her before Garza kicked him in the ribs. “Michaels! Nice of you to join us.” Garza pulled a handgun out of the small of his back and pointed it at Tristan’s head.

“No,” she screamed at the same time as the chief.

“I want him alive. I’ve always wanted to know what it would be like to pit myself against a bona fide Special Forces Recon Marine.”

Tristan pushed himself up on his hands until he was in a sitting position. Garza scowled and waved the gun to indicate that Tristan was supposed to move closer to her. He complied. His jaw was unshaven and grimly set, and she recognized that kind of tension in a man. Deadly.

“Give me your cuffs,” Garza said, and the chief handed them over. Garza smiled as he jerked Tristan’s arms behind his back and cuffed him.

“Pit yourself against me?” Tristan said, his eyes narrowing. “How?”

The chief smiled and Amber still couldn’t reconcile the short, balding milquetoast chief as the ringleader of these men. She was sure it was Garza pulling the strings, but he followed the chief’s orders to the letter.

The chief walked over and crouched down. “You don’t understand, Sergeant.”

Tristan’s voice was scary calm. “Why don’t you enlighten me?” There was a coiled energy in him—as if he were locked and loaded and all he needed was the pull of the trigger.

His features looked like they had been hacked out of