His charisma was a skill his superiors had consistently undervalued. The pompous fools had been unwilling to blur their clear vision and mission parameters to improve the overall morale in a way that would practically guarantee success on any field of battle.
Their loss.
The skills they didn’t value, he would now use to wreak havoc at both the individual and institutional levels. This was going to be phenomenal fun, as well as a just reward for everything they’d taken from him.
He swiveled his chair away from his desk until he could gaze out at the gathering night through the floor-to-ceiling window. At this end of the compound, there wasn’t another person for miles. Not another soul from here to the horizon. He’d earned the solitude, worked alongside the others to carve this quiet, impenetrable place out of the desert.
Now it was merely a matter of time before his first target came out into the open.
Once he had Matt Riley centered in the crosshairs, the first shot in this war would be fired, with brutal, irrevocable accuracy.
Nervous energy plagued Bethany all through the night. First she couldn’t sleep, and when she’d finally dozed off, her dreams had quickly turned to nightmares. Centered on change and loss and the unknown, it was easy to figure out the trigger. In the last one, she’d been listening to Caleb tell a judge all the reasons he didn’t want to live with her anymore. The judge had been giving his ruling that Caleb should spend the next fifteen years with his dad, denying her all visitation and contact, when her alarm had interrupted.
Eyes gritty, a knot of dread in her stomach, she dragged herself out of bed and tried to remember dreams and nightmares weren’t real as she showered and dressed for work. Matt wanted what was best for Caleb, and he was too honorable to play dirty and steal her son with the aid of family court.
Downstairs, she sipped tea while Caleb scarfed down his breakfast. No matter what she did, she couldn’t quell the notion that this was their last normal day as a family of two. Tonight, when he met his father, he would look at her differently, judge her through the lens of his teenage values and find her lacking. They were close, but suddenly she wasn’t sure their relationship could survive the turmoil ahead.
“You okay, Mom?”
“Sure.” She waved off his concern with a smile. “Didn’t sleep well—that’s all.” That was an understatement bordering on a lie. Clearly every conversation today would be guilt-inducing no matter how unrelated it might be to the revelations in store for Caleb tonight.
Without the usual reminder, he cleared his place and rinsed his dishes before loading them into the dishwasher. She found it refreshing and counted it as the first happy spot in her gloomy morning.
She double-checked her purse while he shrugged into his backpack. “How does Greek chicken sound for dinner?”
He paused and aimed a speculative look at her. “That’s company food.”
“Not always,” she said. “I’m just in the mood. It doesn’t sound good?”
“It’s fine.” He picked up his soccer bag. “Coach said practice ends with an endurance run. I might be a little late getting home.”
She glanced toward the calendar over the kitchen desk. “When did he add that?”
“There’s the bus,” Caleb said.
“Here.” She dashed over and gave him a quick hug. “Have a great day. Love you.”
“Love you, too,” Caleb said on his way out the door.
She watched him jog to meet the bus rumbling toward the stop on the corner, one hand pressed to her queasy stomach. She didn’t want Caleb home late. That would mean time alone in the same room with Matt, a situation she’d successfully avoided since she’d told him the pregnancy test had come back positive.
She could call the coach and ask him to give Caleb a pass on the run, but that would also mean picking him up and dodging her astute son’s inevitable questions. The better option would be calling Matt and pushing dinner back by half an hour. Feeling good about that decision, she headed out to the office.
Her discussion with her supervisor went almost as smoothly as she’d expected. She showed him the letter, a little surprised by how seriously he handled the implied threat and her explanation that the source of the discrepancy was the child support she received from a closed agreement. He called security and they joined her in his office so she could relate the incident again and give them the doctored letter and envelope for further analysis.
She didn’t think they’d get much from it, but she agreed it was best to try. It was midmorning when she was finally able to get to her desk, only to find the department assistant had left two messages on her desk that were both from Caleb’s school. Bethany pulled her cell phone from her purse and found two more voice-mail messages from the school, as well. She listened to them quickly and they all amounted to brief requests to return the call as soon as possible.
Worried now, she dialed the school and waited for someone in the office to pick up. “This is Bethany Trent,” she said when the school’s secretary answered. “I received—”
“Yes, Ms. Trent. The principal asked me to put you right through. Hold just a moment.”
In place of hold music, a chipper voice recited the upcoming school events. Bethany tapped a pencil against a notepad on her desk until, at last, the line clicked and Principal Andrea Ingle’s voice greeted her.
“Bethany?”
“Yes.” She’d met Andrea long before Caleb became a student in her school, back when they’d first moved into the neighborhood. She counted the principal as one of her closest friends. “Has something happened?”
Andrea mumbled an oath. “I take it Caleb isn’t home with you?”
Her skin chilled and her heart kicked hard in her chest. “No. I’m at work. I saw him get on the bus.” She heard the desperate note in her voice and stopped to take a breath.
“Right, okay. We do have him checking in at homeroom, but he didn’t make it to Spanish class this morning.”
Bethany glanced at the clock over her desk that Caleb had made during an art project in second grade. Spanish class had started almost two hours ago, while she’d been in her supervisor’s office.
“Per your instructions, we’ve been trying to reach you while doing all we can to find him. I’ve spoken with the school resource officer. We haven’t yet called in the police.”
“Thank you, Andrea.” She forced herself to keep breathing. Panic wouldn’t help anyone find Caleb. “He’s not in the building?”
“No. I think he left on his own after his homeroom teacher took attendance.”
He was safe. He had to be. And when they found him, she’d wring his neck and ground him for the rest of his life. “Is there a camera or anything to verify that?”
“Unfortunately, all I have is a hunch. There are only cameras at the main doors and he didn’t use either of those. We’ve walked the building and grounds twice. Do you want me to call the police?”
Her heart dropped at the suggestion. “Not yet. I have an app installed on his phone. Let me check that first. Are his friends in class?”
“Yes,” Andrea said. “I thought of that too and I’ve spoken with each of them. They don’t know