Point Blank Seal

“It’s a few blocks away.” He slipped his arms beneath Mikey. “You can give me a ride to my rental and then follow me to my motel.”

“I didn’t even ask where you were staying.”

“I think we had other things to talk about. The motel is here in Austin.” Miguel put a finger to his lips, as they walked into the living room where the firefighter still hovered at the front door.

“Everything okay, folks?”

“Not perfect, but we’re all safe.” Jennifer grabbed her phone and laptop from the kitchen counter, and then shoved the computer into her school bag.

She still had to show up for class tomorrow and get through two more days of school.

With one arm still holding Mikey, Miguel took her bag from her and slung it over his shoulder.

When they got to her car, Miguel placed Mikey in his car seat and she buckled him in. “This takes some practice.”

“I want to learn everything. I want to do everything, everything I missed.”

She slammed the back door of the car and kissed Miguel. “Thanks for getting Mikey out of that room.”

“We got lucky. That was a small Molotov cocktail, never really exploded and didn’t project far into the bedroom.”

“We’ll be in touch, ma’am.”

She jerked her head to the side to acknowledge the firefighter. Had he heard Miguel? Did it matter? One of the firefighters had already mentioned something about a Molotov cocktail.

They weren’t the suspects here.

She drove Miguel to his car a few blocks away and then followed him to his motel near the university.

He waved her into a parking spot in front of the two-story building while he swung into a space in a lot at the end of the building.

She waited in the car until he walked up to it. Then she released the trunk and he hauled out her suitcase and school bag.

She followed him to his room on the first level, carrying Mikey in her arms. She eyed the king-size bed and put Mikey in the middle of it.

The motel room had a little kitchenette and Jennifer wedged her back against the counter, folding her arms. “Now that we have some privacy, what do you think happened back there? Who’s responsible?”

Miguel collapsed in a chair, his legs stretched out in front of him. She’d noticed the weight loss before, but his gaunt face and lanky appearance really hit her. Miguel had played baseball in college and had kept himself in peak condition throughout his navy SEAL training and beyond. The months in captivity had taken their toll on his body. What about his mind? How did anyone go through that without requiring psychological help to recover? Was that why the people in DC hadn’t wanted him to leave?

He ran his knuckles along his jaw, which now sported a scruffy beard. “I don’t think that was the government.”

“You don’t think? Would a government agency toss a Molotov cocktail into a child’s bedroom?” She pressed her folded arms against her belly and the knots forming there.

“The FBI? No.”

“But you weren’t being debriefed by the FBI, were you? Or the CIA?”

“No.”

“Would this...other agency do something like that?”

“That room in the front of the house could’ve been any room. Maybe Mikey wasn’t the target.”

She pushed off the counter and did a quick circle around the dumpy room. “That excuses them? They knew there was a child in the house. You said that’s how you found out about Mikey—from their files.”

He held up his hands. “I’m not excusing the inexcusable, but it would be easier to believe this other agency tossed that Molotov cocktail into a house without targeting a child, but...”

“But what?”

“What would be their motive? They want me to come back, for sure, but they don’t want to kill me.”

“Then who?” Jennifer hunched her shoulders. “Who would want to kill you...or us?”

Miguel jumped from the chair and perched on the edge of the bed. He placed a hand on Mikey’s back. “I’d never let anything happen to you or Mikey. You know that, don’t you?”

“You didn’t answer my question, Miguel. Who?”

“There’s only one person I know who wants me dead.”

Jennifer licked her lips. “You don’t mean Vlad?”

Mikey stirred and flinched in his sleep, and Miguel rubbed a circle on his back.

How did he instinctively know what Mikey needed? As far as she knew, he hadn’t been around small kids much. He’d been a younger brother, and while his older brother, Roberto, was married and had children, Miguel hadn’t seen much of his niece and nephews.

“Vlad.”

“That doesn’t make sense either. Vlad had you, didn’t he? You said you were captured and the rest of the team was killed while on a mission to find Vlad. It must’ve been his people who had you imprisoned.”

“At that time, I was more valuable to Vlad alive. He probably thought he could lure the rest of my sniper team out and pick them off one by one.”

“That didn’t happen.”

“My team thought I was dead. It almost worked once when Austin heard some chatter about Vlad’s whereabouts.”

“Austin Foley?”

“Yeah. He still thought I was dead, but Vlad’s people were responsible for an IED that killed Austin’s brother. He was all-in to track down Vlad, but the navy nixed the mission.”

“Now that you’re not useful to Vlad anymore, you think he’s out to kill you? In Texas?”

“He has operatives working Stateside now. You know the incident at the JFK Library a few months ago?”

“That was Vlad?” She plopped down in the chair that Miguel had vacated. “He’s built himself a terrorist network, hasn’t he?”

“It wasn’t just the attempt at the library. We destroyed a training camp he was running in Somalia, and he had entered into a deal with a Colombian drug cartel to exchange drugs for weapons and passage into the US.”

“Oh, my God, Miguel. This is bad. And this is the man who’s after you? After us?”