SEALed With A Kiss(16)

“He switched the plates,” Vinny volunteered, sliding back behind the wheel and gesturing to the back of the ugly sedan. He pulled out his cell phone.

Bella’s gaze flew back to the plates on the Volvo. I XPOZ U. Now, why hadn’t she noticed that? “Vinny, I have to tell you something,” she volunteered, a shiver running up her spine.

At the verge of placing a call, he cast her a distracted glance. “What?”

“I might know who’s behind this.”

His dark pupils seemed to expand as they focused on her. She had his full attention now. “Talk,” he ordered with so much intensity that she had to swallow to find her voice.

With their car fogging up as it idled in the parking lot, she relayed the story of their interview of Rawlings the day before. The words tumbling out of Bella’s mouth made Vinny more tense than ever. When she mentioned Rawlings’ name, he turned as white as a sheet.

“Oh, Jesus,” he moaned when she told him how they’d hidden in the office building and how they’d overheard Rawlings’ assistant say that they’d taken care of the leak. “I filmed the whole interview. I have it at home on my camera,” she added.

Vinny scrubbed a hand over his face. She thought he might call 9-1-1 as soon as he recovered or drive like a bat out of hell to their mother’s house. Instead, he accessed his contacts on his phone and placed a call. “Sir,” he croaked in a voice that radiated alarm. “Tell me you didn’t give the book to NCIS yet,” he pleaded.

Bella had no idea what book he was talking about.

“She interviewed him yesterday,” he blurted, relaying what she’d just told him to someone she figured he worked with. “And now she’s missing—gone. Some guy grabbed her in a parking lot a couple of hours ago while she was out shopping. He took off with her in her car, but her phone’s turned off, so I can’t find her.”


Vinny couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. He had to be dreaming. It wouldn’t be the first time the risks Ophelia took left him bathing in a cold sweat. But if this was a dream, he wasn’t able to rouse from it.

His CO’s voice seemed to be coming at him from a great distance. “Call the police,” Joe Montgomery urged, his calm, implacable voice helping to steady Vinny’s thudding heart. “Tell them Lia’s missing. Have them put out an APB on her vehicle and look for evidence, but don’t tell them your suspicions about Rawlings or he’ll find out that we’re on to him. I was planning to fly up there for Staskiewicz’s funeral tomorrow,” Joe added, “but now I’ll grab the first hop out of here, bringing Senior Chief McGuire and Chief Harlan with me. We’ll come straight to you. In the meantime, I have an idea that should keep Rawlings from hurting Ophelia. I’ll text you his response as soon as I get it.”

“Thank you, sir.” The phone clicked in his ear. In his shock, it took Vinny a second to recollect what to do next. With fingers that shook, he dialed 9-1-1.

Oh, God, Ophelia. Where are you?

To an apathetic operator, he reported Lia’s abduction, said he would wait in the Wannamaker parking lot for the cops to come, and hung up.

Too overwrought to do anything but stare up at the overcast sky, it occurred to him that his whole world was falling apart, and he was helpless to do anything about it. The sound of Bella stifling a sob wrested him from his self-absorption.

“This is all my fault!” his sister wailed, burying her face into her hands.

He palmed the back of her head and pulled it toward his chest to give and receive a much-needed hug. “It’s not your fault,” he assured her while realizing that Bella might have been kidnapped, too, if the women hadn’t gone their separate ways.

Hell, if anyone was to blame, it was Ophelia herself for refusing to recognize when she was out of her league. Exposing corruption was almost every bit as dangerous as killing or capturing terrorists. But whereas Vinny claimed the advantage of training and teammates, Ophelia worked utterly alone. Even when she ought to have told her husband what she was up to, she kept it to herself for fear that he would interfere.

Damn right he would have interfered. What the hell had she been thinking trying to pull Jay Rawlings off the pedestal he’d built for himself? Powerful men did not take lightly to having the skeletons pulled from their closets. Just look at what had happened to Staskiewicz. But then she probably hadn’t made that connection between Rawlings and the former SEAL. He couldn’t begin to wonder what was happening in her head right now. She had to be terrified…

He slammed a lid down on the errant thought that she might not even be alive. Of course she was alive. And if he and his commander had any say so, she was going to stay alive.