“I don’t think so,” she said, her voice getting stronger. “The way he cut me, it felt like so much more than that.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get to the bottom of it. Noah is headed your way.”
Chapter 1
Noah Wilkerson was in one of Levi’s vehicles and out the front gate of the compound, racing toward Dianne’s location within a few minutes. It had been instinctive to grab one of the vehicles with bulletproof glass. But, if somebody was after her, it would be hard enough to deal with all the possible issues without getting sidelined by something unexpected. Sure, it was an abundance of caution—too much, perhaps—but that wasn’t a problem for him.
After spending several years working for people like Levi and Bullard all around the globe, Noah had settled back in his home country and had found that the violence was just about as bad in the USA as everywhere else he’d been. It was second nature for him to look around every corner for it. He didn’t think he’d ever met Di before, but he’d heard about her from their mutual friends. Then he thought about it again, and they may have crossed paths in Australia, but he just couldn’t think of the details right now.
The fear in her voice had been compelling. She was absolutely terrified. They didn’t have anybody in town right now, one of the few days nobody was running errands or picking up supplies or anything. Dianne just had to hold tight, stay on the phone, and talk to Levi and Ice, while Noah drove into Houston proper. He wasn’t even a few minutes out of Levi’s compound when his phone rang. He quickly punched buttons and was connected into a conference call between Ice, Levi, and Dianne.
“Any news?” Noah asked.
“Nothing yet,” Levi said. “She’s sitting still. The car doors are locked. She’s just terrified.” A gentle sob came in the background and then obvious efforts on Dianne’s part to regain her breathing.
“I’m … I’m okay,” she said.
“Just hold strong,” Noah said. “Fifteen minutes, that’s all.”
Levi said on a humorous note, “Unless, at that rate, you get pulled over.”
“Naw, not happening,” Noah said. “The angels are on my side. They know I have to help someone.”
“I hope they are,” Di said, and then her voice gained strength. “And then I’ll want to know where they were an hour ago.”
Noah smiled at that, loving the grit in her voice. “Well, messages sent like Maxwell’s are never very nice,” he said. “And the reasoning behind all this, if we’re correct in our thinking, is even harder. When a man loses somebody very close to him, somebody he obviously cares deeply for, it’s understandable that he’d go off the deep end, but he can’t stay there. Levi, how long ago was it that his son died?”
“It’s got to be at least a year, I would think.”
Ice stepped in and said, “I think it was about eleven months ago.”
“So, long enough to recover from the initial wave of grief, yet not long enough to establish a new world order in your life,” Noah murmured. “And just long enough for something like revenge to grow.”
“Yes,” Levi said heavily. “We weren’t responsible for his son dying though, so I’m not sure why he’s latched on to us.”
“It doesn’t really matter, since it appears that he has chosen us, rational or not,” Noah stated. “What’s interesting is that he’s using transference and sees Di as a way to get at you.”
“I’m thinking that must have been something off the cuff,” Ice said. “Maybe he just saw Di, and it was a flashback of us together joined with Maxwell losing his son, and everything just aligned itself into this being what he had to do.”
Dianne gave a choking laugh at that. “My God,” she said, “that just makes me wonder how many people are out there who have a screw loose and are ready to blow.”
“Well, think about it,” Ice said in a calm voice. “Say he’s going along in life, doing the best he can to find a new way to live, then all of a sudden he sees somebody related to the worst horror he went through, and she’s sitting there in a fancy hotel’s parking lot, having a happy successful life, while he’s struggling, and his anger and rage just lashes out. It’s a simple case of transference. He knows you’re connected to Levi and me, so unfortunately you became an easy target that he could reach, instead of hitting out at the two of us.”
At that, Dianne calmed a little more. “I guess,” she said. “He seemed so angry.”
“That’s because he hasn’t dealt with his issues,” Ice murmured. “He’s still looking to lash out.”
“Survivor’s guilt?” Noah asked.
“Hey, I’m sure we could get into tons of psychological stuff here. The bottom line is that Maxwell’s targeting us and our friends,” Levi said. “Noah, you need to keep an eye out and make sure that somebody isn’t targeting you now.”
“Well, this vehicle doesn’t have any identifying symbols on it, and nobody knows that I’ve worked for you for years overseas,” he said.
A thoughtful tone came into Ice’s voice, as she said, “You know what? You’re right. You could be the best man for this job, since you are relatively unknown here now.”
“Except for a few of your guys, I’ve worked with,” Noah said, “nobody here will have any clue.”
“And the fact that Maxwell’s already targeted Dianne for his anger is interesting,” Ice said.
“I think either he’s just warming up or it doesn’t matter. As long as he can start on the fringes and hurt us, he’ll be happy,” Levi said.
“The question is, who might he see as his next target?” Noah asked. “Because Maxwell’s obviously in town here, so who all is in danger?”
“Everyone,” Ice said. “All of our team and their partners will immediately be put on lockdown.”
“Great,” Dianne said. “They’ll all love me for that.”
“Not if they understand what’s just happened,” Ice said. “It’s one of the rules of being here. You’ll always be on the edge of some kind of attack or another.”
“You know something? I used to think the USA was safe,” Noah said, with a laugh. “But it seems like, in some ways, it’s just as bad or even worse than anywhere else.”
“An awful lot of domestic violence is here,” Ice said. “But usually that’s targeted much closer to home than something like this.”
“Well, I’m just hitting the city limits,” Noah said, “so hold tight, Dianne.”
He clicked off the phone and maneuvered through the traffic just starting to build. He was an expert driver, and he needed to shave off as many minutes as he could getting to Dianne. He knew that she had calmed down and was doing much better than she had been, but he didn’t want the attacker sitting off to the side, waiting to come back and torment her again. Because Noah had seen that happen too. Sometimes an attack happened, and the perpetrator retreated, enjoying seeing the victim deal with the aftermath and the trauma, only to go after them again. That wouldn’t wash with Noah today.