The Silent Setup
Auteur
Katie Mettner
Lezers
15,4K
Hoofdstukken
19
He can only protect them if he harnesses the lessons of his past. A special ops mission gone wrong has left Eric Newman deaf, grappling with PTSD and shouldering the burden of unresolved guilt. Nevertheless, he's building a new career and a new sense of purpose as a security expert. Then Sadie Cook and her baby nephew come crashing into his life. Even before he knows that he's falling for Sadie, he's determined to do whatever it takes to keep her and the little boy safe. But painful memories keep invading, making him wonder if he's the right man to protect them…
Chapter One
The radio crackled to life, and Eric Newman reached for it. His army team brother, Mack Holbock, climbed from the car ahead of him. “We’ve got him covered from the front,” their team leader, Cal Newfellow, said over the radio. “What do you see from your vantage point?”
Eric brought the radio to his lips. “We’re in position. Gunner ready to engage.” Motion caught his attention, and he noticed the back door of the diplomat’s car crack open. A little foot came out, and his breath caught. “The back door of the car is openin—”
He never finished the sentence. An explosion rocked the air, and he was blasted backward in his seat. His head smacked the side of the Humvee from the percussion wave, and his gunner fell into the back seat. Just as the acrid scent of war reached his nostrils, Eric slammed down the accelerator and whipped around the raging fireball of the diplomat’s car. He had to get to the rest of his team. There was no way anyone inside the car had survived the explosion. He could only pray his team wasn’t dead alongside them.
“Do you see the team?” Eric shouted to his gunner, but he got no response. He skidded to a stop when he saw the bodies. His three brothers had fallen alongside each other but were all moving. Crawling. Clawing their way toward him.
Roman Jacobs was first to open the door, helping Mack and Cal into the Humvee, all three bleeding and covered in soot. Eric hit the accelerator and tore away from the carnage before Roman had closed the door. There was no need to render aid to the family in the car. They’d been vaporized the moment the bomb had gone off. They could do nothing for them, and it was time to get out of Dodge before someone decided they were a target too.
Eric pulled alongside the helicopter in a matter of minutes, slammed the Humvee into Park and jumped out, nearly falling when his world spun in one direction before it flipped to the other. Doggedly determined, he helped Roman carry an injured Mack to the chopper, both of his legs a bloodied mess from flying debris. Roman’s lips were moving, but all Eric heard was the buzzing in his ears. He was used to that after an explosion. It had happened more times than he could count, but it was frustrating when he couldn’t communicate with his team. Cal, Roman and Eric piled into the chopper as it lifted off the ground, the sandy hellscape growing distant with every spin of the helo blade. Eric worked with Cal to stabilize Mack on a gurney so they could take stock of his injuries.
Cal tried to wrap Mack’s legs with gauze but kept dropping it. It was what Eric noticed when he went to pick it up that had him shouting for Roman. “His hand!” he yelled at the man who had grown up with Cal as his foster brother. “I’ve got Mack. Help Cal!”
Roman nodded and said something, but Eric couldn’t make out the words. He was dizzy and fell twice while trying to get Mack’s legs covered to protect the wounds. He would not be the reason his buddy became a double amputee. Mack gave him a thumbs-up, his lips moving, but Eric couldn’t determine what he said. He turned to face Roman when there was a tap on his shoulder. Roman had wrapped Cal’s hand in a beehive fashion to hold it all together, but Eric had seen the truth. He no longer had five fingers on that hand. Roman was saying something, but the only thing Eric heard was silence.
“Can’t hear you!”
Roman handed him earphones, and Eric threw them on, forcing himself to concentrate on listening below the ringing in his ears. That was when the truth hit him—under the ringing in his ears was nothing but radio silence.
A TAP ON his shoulder made him turn, arm up, ready to block a blow. He was face-to-face with Efren, who took a step back. “You okay, man?”
Eric dropped his arm and sighed. “Sorry—I got distracted by something.”
“Hey, I know that kind of distraction,” Efren said, shaking his head. “Sometimes you can’t avoid it.”
Efren had lost his left leg during the war. He knew how easy it was to get trapped in those flashbacks, which was one reason he fit in so well at Secure One—the team understood being in a war zone, foreign or domestic. No one judged you for slipping into the past when the conditions were right. Thankfully, the team was always there to bring you back to the present.
Eric pointed straight ahead. “The car reminded me of the one that blew up the day everyone at Secure One got hurt.”
The mission had gone perfectly wrong. Their team might have reached their destination, but the horrors that had transpired after were burned in Eric’s memory forever. Every night for the last fourteen years, he watched the replay of a little foot coming out of the door and then it falling to the ground, unbound by its body. He watched the horror show of Mack walking a few feet away from the car before he was tossed forward in slow motion and fell to the ground. He was alive, but the debris had hit his lower legs and severed the nerves beyond repair. He wore braces on both legs to stay upright now, but he was lucky to be walking at all. Cal, their team leader and owner of Secure One, had nearly lost his right hand. They’d salvaged a few fingers, but the hand was grotesquely disfigured. Cal wore a unique prosthesis to compensate for the fingers he’d lost that day, and it shocked Eric every time Cal pulled out a gun and pulled the trigger with precision.
Eric had gotten the silent injury, literally and figuratively. By the time they’d gotten to the hospital, the ringing had started to subside, which had made how silent the world was even more evident. The doctors had told him that percussion injuries like his often resolved within a few days to a few weeks and to wait for his hearing to return slowly. After four months, they’d admitted that maybe there was a problem and ran some tests. They’d discovered he’d had severe sensorineural hearing loss, which meant his hearing would never return. While he wore top-of-the-line hearing aids, at the end of the day, when he took them out and set them on the bedside table, his world was silent again. It had been fourteen years, and he still wasn’t used to it.
“Do you think we have a situation?”
Eric’s gaze drifted back to the car parked in front of a darkened storage unit. “Time will tell.”
“Should we call Cal?” Efren whispered from behind.
“Whatever for?” he asked defensively. “I’m team leader while he’s in DC, and I’ve worked here as long as Cal and Roman. I can handle this.”
Efren held up his hands in defense. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m so used to Cal standing over my shoulder that I don’t know what to do when he’s not. I’m surprised he even went to DC with everyone.”
“It took some convincing,” Eric admitted, his gaze trained on the car in front of them as it sat idling by an empty unit at the back of the storage buildings.
Convincing was an understatement. Eric had to threaten to leave Secure One for Cal to listen to his complaints. For years, Eric had diligently worked to level up Secure One in the security industry, but the team never seemed to notice. If it hadn’t been for him installing the latest technology and integrating their clients’ information into the computers, it wouldn’t have mattered that Mina was a world-class coder and hacker for the FBI. If he hadn’t found the adaptive outerwear and clothing for uniforms to help Mack, Efren and Mina change quickly while on the job, the team wouldn’t have been prepared when things went sideways. Ultimately, Eric was in the background, ensuring Secure One ran smoothly and efficiently. His ego didn’t require recognition for that. He’d been a member of an elite team of army police when he’d served, and there was no place for ego there. All he wanted was to be on a level playing field with Cal, Mack and Roman—just as they had been when they’d served together.
Last spring, Secure One had been involved in a case that had gained national attention. Mack and his fiancée, Charlotte, had been responsible for finding and arresting the Red River Slayer, a serial killer terrorizing the nation. Charlotte was receiving a medal for bravery in DC, and Cal wanted to attend the event, so he’d asked Eric to lead the team in his absence. He had been stunned by the request since Roman wasn’t going to DC with them, and Roman had always been Cal’s right-hand man. Eric had jumped at the chance—but not to prove to Cal that he was capable. He’d proved that in the field time and time again in much more dangerous situations than surveilling a storage unit.
Eric wanted—no, he needed to prove that he could still be an effective leader who others respected. If he didn’t, all the years he’d spent being a silent leader had been wasted—at least in his eyes. The rest of the team would say otherwise, but they were all coming from a place of leading the team in front of the public, which was an opportunity Eric had yet to have. He wouldn’t waste this chance to show his boss his leadership skills were sharper than ever.
“I readily admit that I don’t understand all the dynamics between you, Cal, Roman and Mack. That said, I’d trust you to have my back any day on the battlefield. You and Selina are the two most underappreciated members of this team,” Efren said.
“I can’t fault your observation skills, that’s for sure. I’m surprised you noticed Selina’s contributions, considering her prickly attitude toward you.”
“Probably why I noticed,” he said, chuckling as he shook his head. “That said, it would be hard to miss. She’s putting on Band-Aids when she should be out in the field. Don’t get me wrong—she’s great at what she does, but I think she’s underutilized for her talents.”
“I get the feeling you aren’t the only one who feels that way,” Eric said with a nod. “Selina may need to have a day of reckoning with Cal too. As for you, I don’t know what you did, but you sure rubbed her the wrong way. Usually she’s the sweetest, most easygoing person at Secure One.”
“I wish I knew too. Selina has been prickly since the moment they introduced me to her. If you want my opinion, I think she’s hurt and angry that Cal hired me when it should have been her.”
“That’s possible, but we needed help at the time, and Cal couldn’t worry about whose toes he stepped on or who got their feelings hurt. We were hunting a serial killer.”
“I can agree and disagree on this one,” Efren said. “Yes, you needed help, but an EMT or nurse is easier to find than someone like me.”
“Fair.” Eric was forced to agree with his logic, especially since they’d only procured him because he was a friend of Mina’s. “All I’m saying is I don’t think that crossed anyone’s mind. Mina knew you and said you’d come in fast.” He sighed and shook his head. “I guess I’m just as guilty as Cal for not suggesting he bring Selina in and hire a new nurse. I hope Selina sticks around long enough to have it out with Cal. She deserves her day in court.”
“I hope she does too, and hey, if it takes the heat off my back, you won’t hear me complaining,” Efren said, tongue in cheek.
The dome light came on inside the car, and Eric crouched low—Efren sat since his above-knee prosthesis didn’t allow him to crouch. “Get this on video, and make sure to get the make and model of the car and the plate,” he whispered, motioning for Efren to use the app on their tablet. It wouldn’t be fantastic quality, but it would give them something to go on.
Two men climbed from the car, and Eric leaned in for a closer look. He had no doubt a crime had been committed or was about to be committed, and he wanted to see it go down in real time just in case he could still help the victim. Fettering’s was a self-storage for the rich and famous, but it was the middle of the night, and the rich and famous didn’t casually drop by their storage unit in the cold rain to pick something up. Efren and Eric were there to find holes in the client’s security and close them before bad things happened. He knew they’d just found a hole and a bad thing was about to happen.
He motioned for Efren to pull on his night-vision goggles before he did the same. The lighting was nonexistent, which was another issue for Fettering to address, but the goggles would keep them from missing anything. He kept his gaze trained on the two guys opening the storage unit door while he pondered if what Efren had said was true. If it was, then he did owe Selina an apology. He knew what it was like to be constantly overlooked as an asset to the team, even when you were working your tail off every day. He’d chat with her and let her know that feeling hurt for being overlooked was okay. Then he’d encourage her to talk to Cal and demand the respect she deserved.
“What are they carrying?” Efren whispered as the guys grabbed something from the car and carried it into the storage unit.
“Whatever it is, it’s heavy,” he answered. The men shifted, and he caught a glimpse of the item. “It’s a trunk.” The two guys lowered it to the unit’s floor and then stood. They turned to face each other for a moment before they pulled the door back down and locked it. “I don’t feel good about it,” Eric said as the car pulled out the back exit.
What he didn’t tell Efren was that he could read their lips. Whoever the Winged Templar was, that was who these guys worked for. Their expressions had told him they also feared him. Eric ran a hand along the back of his neck to see if the hair was standing up. His ingrained military intuition told him what those guys had just dropped inside the unit wasn’t seasonal clothing.
“My gut is clenched as well,” Efren agreed.
“First of all, two guys don’t go out at midnight to drop off something at a storage unit unless they want to be certain no one is around.”
“True,” Efren said, moving his goggles to the top of his head to check his tablet screen. “What’s second of all?”
“Second of all, because of the first of all we’re going to search that unit.”
“Sure, it’s unusual for two guys to drop something off late at night, but I don’t know if it’s break-in worthy.”
Eric slid his goggles to the top of his head. “The property management has a right to search any unit that displays suspicious activity. It’s in the lease they signed.”
“And didn’t read.”
“Bingo,” Eric said before he pointed at the tablet. “Are they gone?”
“Sure are. They drove out of the gate and headed down the road. I still don’t understand why Fettering, who has more money than Heinz has pickles, put a storage business on his property. The clientele can be rather sketchy, and it’s a lot of coming and going at all hours of the day and night,” Efren pointed out.
“All true, but believe it or not, there are a lot of rich people in Minnesota who need a place to store their off-season toys and goodies. Dirk Fettering is one of those rich people. He built these units to cater to his kind of people. Classy, not sketchy.”
“Well, that felt sketchy,” Efren mumbled, motioning at the storage unit.
“Exactly,” Eric agreed, taking his bolt cutters from his belt. “And that’s why we’re going to take a look.”
Efren hoisted himself to standing and grabbed the tablet. “What does your gut say?”
“I give it fifty-fifty odds that it’s either money or a body.”
“A body doesn’t make sense. Eventually it would start to smell.”
“Then let’s hope it’s money,” Eric said, pushing himself away from the building. He knew full well it wasn’t money. He was almost certain it was a body. The men had struggled under the weight of it, and you didn’t dump money in a storage locker and drive away. Why they’d dump a body here, he couldn’t say, but this was his chance to prove himself to Cal, and he wasn’t going to sleep on the job.
“This is the perfect example of why that back entrance and exit is a problem. The lack of security back here is disturbing,” he said over his shoulder.
“They have to swipe their card to get in, right?” Efren asked.
“They have to swipe a card. It doesn’t have to be theirs. It’s easy to dupe a card with no one the wiser.” There was a guard at the front entrance to check people in, but not the back one. It had been their first suggestion when they’d taken the job, but Fettering had refused to consider closing the back entrance and exit from 8:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m. He’d said as long as the person had a card, they had every right to be there. Eric knew that wasn’t the case, and after their initial walkthrough tonight, he’d put it back on the list as number one. What had just happened had proved his point.
The two men reached the storage unit, and Eric glanced around the space. “We need better lighting and cameras back here too. We just lucked out that we were back here when they pulled up.”
“Agreed,” Efren said. “Fettering built a state-of-the-art storage facility for big-name clients and then slacked on security measures. It feels a little suspicious to me.”
“You’d be surprised how often that happens,” he said. “They get so caught up in the idea of what they’re offering people that they forget about the logistics of how to protect it. Got gloves?”
They each tugged black leather gloves from their waistbands and pulled them on. Eric inspected the lock and chuckled at the simple padlock you could buy at the local hardware store. As if that would stop anyone who wanted to get inside. Sometimes people were far too trusting of other humans. He cut the metal band quickly and rolled the door up. Efren flashed his light into the cavernous space, and Eric wasn’t surprised to see the unit was empty other than the giant trunk.
“Something feels off. Why do they have this giant storage unit for one trunk?” Efren asked.
Eric shook his head as he stood with one hand planted on his hip. “I would guess that whatever is in that trunk is the answer. This was likely a drop, and someone else will come to pick it up.”
“And if it’s not a drop?”
“Then it’s a body, and the climate control will buy them a few extra days before it starts to smell.”
“Are we going to open it, or are we going to call the cops?”
“Oh, we’re going to open it,” Eric said, “and depending on what we find, we’ll call the cops.”
He knelt, inspecting the locks on the trunk. They were surprisingly easy to get open with his lock-pick set. Once the three locks were popped, they lifted the lid. A smell hit him that he knew all too well. Copper.
“Well,” Efren said as he stared at the dead body inside the trunk, “you called it. Last time I checked, a man’s head doesn’t belong in the middle of his chest.”
“Nope,” Eric agreed. “Sure doesn’t. It looks like a call to the Bemidji PD is in order.”
Efren flicked off the flashlight. “This is gruesome.”
“Yes, removing someone’s head and sitting it on their chest to fit them in the trunk is a bit gruesome, but the manner of death also indicates—”
“A mob hit,” Efren answered, and Eric tipped his head in acknowledgment.
“That or a gang killing. Either way, this guy is not a Secure One problem. He’s a police problem.” Eric pulled out his phone to call the police, but internally he was cussing out the universe. The first time Cal trusted him with a solo job and he found a body. Not that he had any control over that other than how things went now.
“Maybe we should wait and see if someone comes along to pick up the trunk,” Efren suggested.
“We don’t know for sure that anyone is. Now that I know it’s a body, I’m legally obligated to report it. We’ll leave it to the PD to sort out. A dead guy in a trunk is above our paygrade.”
“Fair point. If nothing else, a dead guy in a trunk is also incentive for Fettering to tighten security.”
“We can only hope.” Eric’s tone was dry and nonbelieving as he connected his hearing aids to his phone via Bluetooth.
After reporting the body to the police, they settled in to wait for a squad. Eric would update Cal as soon as he turned this over, and then he’d sit down with Dirk and find out exactly what kind of business he was running out here. Eric had every intention of proving he could do the job, even if it was the last thing he did.
