Page 100 of Fatal Mistake
“It’s Tara,” Max said. “She’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’?”
“Agent Ward has been trying to call you, and when you didn’t answer, he called me.”
Cal remembered the five missed calls he’d spotted a few minutes ago, and his heart sank. “I turned off my phone to safely approach the bomb. What happened?”
“Tara claimed she heard a noise outside her bedroom window. Ward went out back to check it out. She grabbed his car keys and phone from the counter and took off. With no landline at the safe house, he hiked next door to use their phone.”
Cal’s thoughts jumbled into a tangled mess, each thought trying to find purchase, but nothing made sense. “Why would she take off?”
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out at the same time as trying to locate her,” Rick said.
Locate her.
The reality of the situation hit Cal. Tara was out there. Missing. On her own. Maybe in Keeler’s hands. Cal’s knees threatened to give out, and he thought he might drop to the ground.
No. He couldn’t afford to be weak. Tara needed him. She needed him now, and he had to find her.
Max eyed Cal for a long moment and pinched his lips together.
“You’ve got something else to add, so out with it,” Cal demanded.
“Tara left a message on the desk for you.”
“What did it say?”
“‘I’m sorry.’”
“Sorry. Sorry for what?” Cal’s mind went back to his last conversation with her.
She’d been acting odd, but he’d chalked it up to the fact that he was leaving her in someone else’s care again. But now it looked like her eagerness to be rid of him may have been planned.
“Does Ward have GPS on his car or his phone?” Cal asked, but didn’t manage to keep the panic from his voice.
“Doesn’t matter.” Max widened his stance. “We found his car a few miles from the safe house, and his phone and hers have been destroyed.”
Cal hissed out a breath. “So you don’t have a clue where she is.”
“Sorry, man,” Rick said. “But something made her run, and since you know her better than we do, we thought you might figure it out.”
Could he? Maybe if he could clear his brain and focus, but all he could think of right now was that the woman he’d come to care for was in the hands of a raving madman.
“Cal?” Max asked. “What would motivate Tara to leave the safe house?”
Cal curled his fingers into his palm and called up the precision focus BUD/S had taught him.
“June,” he said. “She’d leave if June was in danger.”
“I’ll call the agents on her detail.” Max dug out his phone and dialed.
Time ticked by in slow, excruciating seconds.
“First agent’s not answering. I’ll try the other one.” Max dialed again, then shook his head. “No answer.”
“Then something’s going down at June’s house,” Rick said. “And odds are, it involves Tara.”
Max sucked in a quick breath, and Cal would have done the same thing if he could draw even an ounce of air into his lungs, but he swore an armored tank had parked on his chest.
