Rebecca York: Betrayed

“Thanks to the fast thinking of Elena Reyes and the courageous intervention of Shane Gallagher, the hostages were rescued quickly.”

“What about the woman who was shot?” a reporter called out.

“She’s in serious but stable condition,” Kinkead answered.

As his boss talked, Shane scanned the crowd. In the back he could see his two partners and friends, Jack Brandt and Max Lyon. They’d met a little over a year ago when they’d all been in Miami and had all gotten caught in a drug raid at a local nightclub. Along with a bunch of drunk and disorderly guys, they’d been taken to police headquarters and held overnight at the Miami jail.

The three of them had kept order in the holding cell all night. And when they were released in the morning, they’d gone out for a beer and started talking. It turned out that Jack was a former Navy SEAL. Shane had been in the Army Investigative Service. And Max had been a detective in Howard County, Maryland.

When they discovered that they were all currently unemployed with similar skill sets, they’d come up with the idea of starting the Rockfort Security Agency. And since they were all from Maryland, they’d located the agency in Rockville, outside D.C., where they could get a deal on the rent. And they’d made a success of the venture.

Shane knew his two friends were staying at the back of the crowd because he was working undercover at S&D. Lincoln Kinkead had hired Rockfort to find out who was trying to steal proprietary information from his company, and Shane had taken the job as security chief, which put him in an excellent position to poke into all of the personnel files.

Shane’s mind snapped back to the present as Kinkead said he was turning the interview over to him.

He stepped to the microphone and told about his rescue plan.

“What if you’d failed?” a reporter asked. “Wouldn’t the hostages have been in more danger?”

“I didn’t plan to fail,” Shane answered, thinking that probably sounded too arrogant.

After taking a few more questions, he ushered Elena to the microphone. She looked pale but resolute.

“I was one of the hostages,” she began and told about being held captive by Duckworth.

“And she held his attention while I came in the window,” Shane added.

“Were you scared, Ms. Reyes?” someone shouted.

“Of course. But I thought Mr. Gallagher was our best chance to get out of there alive.”

He stayed with her while she answered a few more questions. But he knew she didn’t want to prolong the ordeal, so he cut off the interview quickly.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” she said as they went back into the building. “Well, actually, thanks for getting us all out of the HR department.”

He laughed. “All in a day’s work.”

“Oh, sure.”

She looked outside at the reporters who were still gathered around the entrance. “Unfortunately, I still have to get to my car and get out of here.”

“I can retrieve your car. And you can meet me at the back of the building.”

“Would you?”

“Of course. Give me your keys.”

She fumbled in her purse for her keys. “It’s a burgundy Honda,” she told him. “About five rows from the front.”

Max and Jack looked at him questioningly as he headed into the parking lot.

“I’m getting Elena’s car for her. I’ll meet you back at the office.”

The two men departed, and he got into the Honda.

Elena was waiting for him at the loading dock.

“Thanks for doing this,” she said as he climbed out of the vehicle.

“You still look worried.”

“The next ordeal will be talking to my parents.”

“Why?”

She shook her head. “We’re from San Marcos, where it was dangerous to call attention to yourself. They’re not going to like it that I was on TV.”

He knew she was from the Central American country, but he pretended that he hadn’t perused her personnel file.

“But it’s not for anything bad. You’re a hero. They should be proud of you.”

“In their minds, it won’t matter,” she said as she climbed into the vehicle and drove away.

He watched her disappear into the darkness, thinking that he would have liked to spend some time with her—decompressing after the ordeal. Then he canceled the thought.

He was attracted to her, but that couldn’t get in the way of his investigation. And because of her position in the IT department, she was high on his suspect list.

“Nothing like relaxing with a beer after almost getting shot,” Shane said as he kicked off his shoes and put his feet up on the scarred table in the Rockfort offices, conveniently located in an industrial park not far from S&D.

“I guess you weren’t counting on a nutcase trying to take down the HR department,” Max Lyon said dryly.

“Not hardly. But like I told Bert Iverson, all’s well that ends well.”

“You don’t think you were taking a chance rappelling down the building and crashing through the window?” Jack Brandt asked.

Shane took another swig of beer and gave Jack a pointed look. “You mean like you were taking a chance invading a nut-ball militia group a few months ago?”

“I wouldn’t do it now,” Jack said.

“Because you were redeemed by the love of a good woman,” Shane shot back.

“Is that bad?”

“It worked out okay for you. I got burned by my ex, and I’m not looking to repeat the experience.”

“That doesn’t mean all women are bad.”

“It means I’m not going to get fooled again,” he said, punching out the words.

When he saw Jack open his mouth, then close it, he was relieved his friend had decided to drop the subject.

Max jumped into the conversation. “Lincoln Kinkead owes you one for stopping that lunatic before he shot anyone else.”

“Kinkead wasn’t exactly happy about my methods. I thought he might fire me before Bert Iverson pointed out that I’d saved a bunch of lives.”

“You did. What was Kinkead’s objection?”

Shane laughed. “He doesn’t like what he considers hotdogging. Plus I don’t think he liked my calling attention to myself.”

Max shook his head. “So you won’t climb the outside of his building again.”

“Let’s hope.”

“We haven’t talked to you in a couple of days. Are you making any progress on your main mission?”

“There’s nothing new.”

S&D developed software for the business and financial community. Their biggest product was an office software package that was giving Microsoft a run for its money. But they had something in development that was rumored to be a blockbuster.

Lincoln Kinkead had come to Rockfort after one of his employees, a man named Arnold Blake, was murdered. Blake had worked in the IT department, and Kinkead suspected he’d been trying to steal the specs for the new hush-hush product. It was something called Falcon’s Flight. Shane had no idea what it was, and Kinkead had kept the information to himself.

Shane was working on the theory that Blake had been murdered because he refused to turn over the material he’d stolen to the people who had hired him.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Kinkead was sure that whoever wanted Falcon’s Flight was making another try for it, substantiated by evidence that someone had recently been poking into the company’s product files without authorization.

“Do you think today’s events are related to the Arnold Blake murder?” Max asked.

“It doesn’t seem like it, but I guess I’d better check to see if there’s any connection between Blake and Duckworth. The only thing I know now is that whoever’s tiptoeing around in the development files again is very skillful and very careful—and you couldn’t say that for Duckworth. His style was more like clomping around in jackboots.”