Lena Diaz - Swat Standoff

“Just in case what?”

He fisted his hands at his sides, feeling like an idiot. But he’d gone this far. He might as well go all in. “In case the entire SWAT team was abducted. Minus you and me, of course.”

She blinked again. Then she started laughing.

He endured her laughter for a full minute. He couldn’t take more than that. He brushed her hand off the doorknob and yanked open the door.

“Blake, wait. I’m sorry. Please don’t go. I shouldn’t have laughed at you. But you know cell service around here is awful. Your calls probably didn’t even go through.”

Since her voice was still laced with laughter, he didn’t bother to reply. He strode out of the house and took the porch steps two at a time.

“Blake?”

He hopped into his truck and took off down the road, punching the gas to give free rein to his sour mood and temper. That was when he hit the first huge pothole. The front right tire slammed into the hole, and the entire truck lurched at a sickening angle before the tire popped out again. He cursed and was forced to slow to a near crawl. It took him a good ten minutes just to reach the end of the street-from-hell.

A flash of white zoomed at him from the left. He jerked around to see Donna’s white Ford Escape barreling onto the road from an overgrown field. He swore and slammed his brakes, skidding and coming to a bouncing halt just a few feet from her driver’s side door.

She stopped too, her face looking pale and drawn as she stared at him through her driver’s side window, illuminated by his headlights. Before he could even unbuckle his seat belt, she was out of her SUV and running to his passenger door. He pushed the button to roll down the window.

“What the hell was that for?” he demanded. “You almost made me run right into you.”

“I called them,” she said. “The whole team. No one answered. I sent a group text. Nothing.” She swallowed, looking visibly shaken. “I even tried the radio. All I got was static. It’s not raining anymore. We can’t blame the storm now. I can see them not answering your calls. But they wouldn’t worry me like this. My God, Blake. What’s going on?”

He popped open the passenger door. “Get in.”

Chapter Five

Blake slowed his truck to turn down a gravel road that would lead them to the wooded area where they’d conducted the paintball exercise that morning. Beside him, Donna clutched a flashlight in her hands, anxiously staring through the windshield.

“What happened after I left Hawkins Ridge?” he asked. “Did Dillon take the team to another training site, maybe in one of those communication dead zones? Since you didn’t have a partner at that point, I would guess he sent you home early. Maybe they decided to stay late, or came back for round two long after you were gone.” He steered around a rut in the road.

“No. I mean, yes. Both.” She swiped at her bangs, something she rarely did unless she was upset. “After Dillon...ordered you to leave, I...uh...went home early. Like you said. You know, because I didn’t have a partner.”

“Okay. He continued the training without you, then. Like I said, the communications might not be working. Or maybe the storm caught them by surprise, and they had to wait it out. A rain-swollen creek could have prevented them crossing, and they’re sitting it out until it goes down.”

“No. That’s not it. He did send me home early. But training was over for the day. All that was left was for the team to clean the equipment and stow it in their trunks for next time. You know what a stickler Dillon is about maintaining equipment, even fake guns. Cleaning them and prepping the gear for the trip back would have taken a good half hour, maybe forty-five minutes. But he wouldn’t have kept anyone longer than that. He kept up with the weather reports, knew a storm was moving in. No way would he risk anyone’s safety by having them out in the middle of it. I’m telling you, they’re not training.”

The gravel ended, and the remaining fifty yards of road was dirt. The truck bounced around the last curve, and the clearing was revealed up ahead. But it wasn’t empty. Five trucks sat parked side by side, exactly as they’d been that morning. Blake gave Donna a puzzled glance as he parked beside them. He killed the engine and looked over at the obviously empty vehicles.

“Why would they still be up here?” he asked. “It doesn’t look like the vehicles have moved at all. I thought you said Dillon wanted everyone home, safe, with the storm coming in.”

“He did.” Her voice was quiet and strained, her face pale with worry for her friends. She opened her door.

“Wait. Did you call the station when you were making all those calls earlier?”

“Yes. The chief and the team hadn’t checked in. But I was careful not to alarm the skeleton night staff. I was blasé in how I asked the question.”

“Fair enough,” he said. “Let’s see if there’s a reasonable explanation, or whether we need to raise the alarm after all.”

He left the engine running with the headlights on to help them see better. But even with that, and a bright moon overhead, it was difficult to see much beyond the beams of their flashlights.

They took turns shouting out to the team. But no one answered. After a few minutes of searching, they were back at the parking area, with no clue about where their friends had gone.

Or, rather, where Donna’s friends had gone.

To Blake, they’d always been just coworkers. Now, after he’d been fired, they weren’t even that. But they all bled blue. If something had happened, he was darn well going to do everything he could to help them.

Whether they wanted him to or not.

“Maybe there was a medical emergency,” Blake theorized. “If they stayed up here awhile after you left—maybe to do another training exercise—and they got caught in the storm—”

“Dillon wouldn’t let that happen. He would have gotten them out of here before the storm let loose.”

Her steadfast trust in Dillon was a little irritating. Blake didn’t think the man could walk on water the way Donna did. “He’s not a meteorologist. Let’s assume for a moment that he misjudged the storm, that after you left he decided they should train a little longer, and they got caught out here. They took shelter somewhere, maybe in the old barn, where our fake perpetrator was hiding during the paint ball exercise. They could have holed up inside to wait out the storm. After the lightning stopped, something else happened. Maybe the chief had a heart attack, or one of them got cut or something. So they needed to take him back down the mountain to get him help.”

He pointed to the puddles still in the dirt, the wet spots on the trunks of the trees closest to the clearing. “Judging by the way the slope runs here, this parking lot is probably like a bowl in the rain. It could have been a small lake by the time the storm passed, and they couldn’t get to their vehicles.”

“So they just, what, trekked through the woods and got lost? Even if someone was hurt and they had to hoof it down the mountain, where are they now? They grew up around here. Getting lost isn’t something that would happen.”

“What else could have happened? I don’t see any tire tracks or footprints. No signs of anyone else coming up here. In spite of my fears earlier, foul play against an entire SWAT team seems hard to believe.”

“A SWAT team with fake guns,” she said, her voice quiet. “Dillon was all about safety. He made us lock up our real guns and ammo while we did the exercises. He didn’t want to risk an accidental shooting.”

He studied her. “What are you saying? That instead of accepting that they could be lost in the woods, you think someone came up here and...what? What did he do with them?”