Page 18 of Hero's Heart

“I’ll be the front man and carry the cash along this road.” He traced a line down a dirt path near the outskirts of the town with his fingers.

“Bear, you’ll sit with some bigger guns in a vehicle up the road behind me, ready as either a QRF to hostilities or for a successful extraction once we have Marissa.”

He glanced up to see if the younger man understood his acronym—QRF: quick reaction force. There was no confusion on his face at all. Good sign.

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Bear continued studying the map in front of him, zooming in on particulars.

“Theo, I want you over here.” Callum’s finger highlighted a dense patch of trees on an elevated position nearby. “Be ready to provide precision rifle support in the event we need some surgical hole-punching.”

A grin lit Theo’s face. “With pleasure.”

These two were as excited about this mission as Callum was. Again, not the most exhilarating assignment in the world, but it still felt good to be out here in the international mix again.

“Okay, then let’s pray this goes as smoothly as—” Callum was cut off by his phone ringing. He looked at the ID.

Lincoln Bollinger, just the man he wanted to hear from.

He was another Oak Creek resident—Bear’s cousin, in fact. Had been born and raised there. But Lincoln wasn’t like anyone else in Oak Creek.

Hell, Lincoln wasn’t like anyone else on the planet.

But right now, Callum needed him.Prodigious savantwas the term thrown around about Lincoln when it came to his abilities with computers. The man was an expert at finding information through the web—the one normal people used, and other versions of the web Callum didn’t want to know specifics about since he was an officer of the law.

Callum answered the video call. “Hey, Linc. What you got?”

As usual when Lincoln was in the middle of something, he offered no greeting. “I was looking into the kidnappers. It wasn’t difficult to find info. The Kozak brothers—Jakob and Nikola—are running the show. They’re bad news, but not exactly criminal masterminds. Mostly thugs with guns and a reputation for violence. An aggressive arm of a larger enterprise.”

Surveillance shots of two grim-faced men showed up on their screens. “Good-looking one is Jakob. He has, thus far, run most of the kidnapping operations. The almost bald, small-eyed other guy is Jakob’s younger brother, Nikola. Definitely not Einstein.”

“What else do we know about them?” Callum asked.

“They’re suspected in some other kidnappings throughout Europe over the past few years,” Lincoln continued. “Similar snatch and grabs, generally people in their early twenties who aren’t paying attention or think themselves invincible—posting their plans and locations on social media.”

Callum gritted his teeth. It was a wonder anyone under the age of thirty was alive, given how they publicly shared so much about their lives.

“Op Sec doesn’t cross most people’s minds, sadly.” Theo shook his head.

“Operational security definitely didn’t cross Marissa Getty’s mind.” Lincoln typed something, and multiple pictures of the woman, plus all her social media feeds, came up.

Jesus. Marissa had posted everywhere about nearly every damn aspect of her life. Everything from where and what she was eating, to a detailed agenda about every night’s whereabouts.

So foolish.

Callum studied the images. Marissa was attractive—long black hair, brown eyes, delicate features. But there was a hardness to her, an air of entitledness, that did absolutely nothing for him.

Although, that still didn’t mean she deserved to die at the hands of brutish kidnappers.

“The most concerning thing about the Kozaks is that they don’t have the best track record for returning hostages alive.”

“What sort of track record are we talking about, cuz?” Bear asked.

“Less than fifty percent of the kidnappings they were known to have a hand in have had the victims returned alive. And I’m sure there are more lethal cases we don’t know about yet that they were involved with.”

Shit. And Callum was willing to bet there had been loss of life among the teams sent to handle the trade-offs with the Kozak brothers too. All it would take was for the Kozaks to get a little greedy—decide to keep the hostageandthe money—and things would go to shit fast.

No wonder Dustin hadn’t wanted to send in his own men.

“Those are shit odds for both Marissa and us, Linc. What can we do to improve them?”

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