“Where’s Peyton?” he demanded, getting a grip in Magpie’s hair and giving him a rough shake as one of the cops slipped in to kick the 9mm aside. “Where is she?”
Magpie laughed, his eye starting to go blurry. “There’s no way I’m telling you anything, other than to promise you’ll never find her in time.”
“Damn you! Talk to me!” Noah shouted, shaking Magpie again, but it was already too late. The asshole had fallen into unconsciousness.
An older cop with sergeant stripes on his sleeve was at his side, pulling Noah away as another began to apply first-aid to the injured man.
“Who the hell are you? Who the hell is he? And what the hell is going on here?” the cop asked.
“My name is Noah Bradley. I’m a Navy SEAL.” He ran his hand through his hair. “The guy bleeding on the floor is an international terrorist known as Magpie. He kidnapped Peyton Matthews this morning. Three members of my SEAL Team and I tracked him to the airport, hoping to find out where he left her. You can confirm the terrorist part of this story with Agent Glenn Woods from the Treasury Department at the San Diego field office.”
The cop regarded him with a frown. “Peyton Matthews, the famous writer? She’s been kidnapped by terrorists?”
Noah wanted to be surprised that a man as old as the cop new who Peyton was, but at this point, he was too wrung out to be surprised by anything. “Yes, and if Magpie’s last words before he passed out are true, then we don’t have much time to find her.”
The cop shook his head. “I’m gonna have to call this in to my captain so we can get the feds involved.”
The officer turned to walk away, pulling out his cell phone and probably starting a long chain of calls that would take hours to get anything done. Hours they didn’t have. A few of the other cops looked Noah’s way, but must have decided if their sergeant was going to ignore him, they would, too.
Noah dug out his phone, trying to figure out who to call—Woods, Chasen, or Dwayne. He was about to bring up his contact list when he an app icon caught his eye. It was the Find My Phone app Peyton had put on there. He was still staring at the icon when Lane walked up.
It couldn’t be this easy, could it? Would Moore and Magpie have let Peyton keep her phone? It seemed too impossible to even consider, but still…
He clicked on the icon and connected to the sight—thankfully, Peyton’s username and password were already filled in or this would never have worked—then waited impatiently for the app to locate her phone. If it said it was at his apartment, he was screwed.
But the app didn’t point to his apartment. When the map screen first showed up, it was a wide angle shot of the city, then narrowed down until it showed a little red dot…at the San Diego International Airport.
He resisted the urge to let out a hooyah. Moore could have taken her phone and tossed it into a trash can when he got here, Noah thought as the map continued to zoom in. But when the red spot ended up in the middle of long-term parking, he knew he had something.
Hooyah.
Turning on his heel, Noah was ready to take off running back down the terminal until he saw the twenty or so cops and TSA agents standing between him and where he needed to go. And none of them looked like they were interested in letting him walk out of here.
“I hate to do this, but I need to get out of here—as in five minutes ago,” Noah said, turning back to his Teammate. “Can you distract those cops?”
Lane looked over Noah’s shoulder, then gave him a grin. “No problem.”
Without another word, Lane jogged toward the cluster of cops, waving for them to follow him toward the connecting terminal. “I saw some more terrorists this way!”
While everyone else dived for cover, the cops and TSA agents took off running after Lane. Crap, he was going to be in so much trouble once everyone found out there were no more terrorists. But once again, Noah wasn’t going to waste the sacrifice.
Noah ran through the terminal and into the main concourse, then out the doors toward long-term parking. He’d never used the Find My Phone app before and he ended up running past the right location by a dozen feet or so before realizing he needed to turn around. Stopping, he scanned the area, taking in the dozen or so vehicles around him. He immediately discounted the pickup truck and minivan and instead focused on the obvious rental cars.
He pounded frantically on the trunk of each of them with his fist, calling Peyton’s name, then pressing his ear to the lid to see if he heard anything in reply. He muttered a curse after the fourth car. It had to be close to a hundred degrees out here. With the sun beating down like it was, the trunk would feel like a frigging oven.
He banged on the fifth car, calling Peyton’s name, then putting his ear to the lid. Instead of silence, this time he heard a muffled sound. His heart beat faster in his chest. He’d found her—and she was alive.
“Hang on!” he called. “I’m going to get you out of there.”
Running around to the side of the car, he rammed the window with his elbow. The jacket he’d put on to hide the gun he’d been carrying protected his arm from the glass, and he quickly reached in to open the door. Not every car had a way to unlock the trunk from the inside, but he hoped this particular make and model might.
It didn’t.
Shit.
Why the hell hadn’t he thought to search
