Page 20 of The Only Reason (The Trident Trilogy 2)

Chapter Ten

Virginia Beach, Virginia

July 26, 2011

MILLIE! Are you going to text me that you made it home ok or am I going to have to send out a search party?!!!

Mack stared at his text. He sent it after calling her twice. Both calls went straight to voicemail. It had been almost two hours since Millie left the base. She showed up unexpectedly this afternoon. At the most, it should take an hour for her to get back home. Mack told her to text when she got there. She hadn’t yet. He started worrying when the clock hit exactly one hour, and now he was in full-blown panic mode.

After she left, his team had been briefed on a few missions in Iraq. They were wheels up in a few days. He sat in his car wondering how he could follow her route home, check every ditch he was sure she was lying in, and still get back in time to leave for Iraq. His phone finally beeped.

DAD!! Omg. I’m sorry!! I stopped at Kaylee’s house on the way home. I forgot.

My bad! Call off the search party. I’m back home. Love you. xxoo

Mack took a deep breath and laughed. She would be the death of him. He was sure about that. He wondered daily how his child could be so unaffected by things like time. His entire life was based on order, and he was raising a daughter who had absolutely no sense of it. As much as it almost drove him to the edge, it was still his favorite thing about her. She was carefree—the exact opposite of him—and he loved every last bit of it.

Glad you’re back safely, sweetie. Love you. See you this weekend. xxoo

Mack’s mind was still full of Millie when he unlocked his apartment door. Normally, he would have noticed the new scratches around the lock. He was trained to notice small details like that. He didn’t notice them though, so he was taken by surprise when he heard a voice coming from his living room.

“Millie’s life is in danger.” It was a man’s voice with a very heavy Slavic accent.

Muscle memory took over as Mack fluidly took his pistol out of his waist-band and dropped to a knee behind the protection of the entryway table. There was a little light coming through the blinds, so he could just see the outline of a man sitting on the couch—his arms crossed on his lap with no detectable weapon. Mack had an easy shot at his head. He decided not to take it.

Mack kept the pistol pointed at the man. “Stand up,” Mack ordered.

The man stood up and raised his arms above his head.

When Mack flipped the lights on, he could see the man was about his age. Maybe a little older. He was wearing a crisply pressed shirt and trousers. “Pull up your shirt and turn around slowly,” Mack said as he stood up.

“I don’t have on an explosive belt,” the man said as he lifted his shirt and carefully turned around.

“Up against the wall—hands overhead, feet spread.”

The man did as he was told. Mack searched him for weapons as he kept his gun pressed to the man’s head. When Mack was sure he was clean, he grabbed the man by the back of the collar and forced him to sit at the kitchen table. Mack remained standing—his gun at the ready.

“Put your hands on the table where I can see them,” Mack said gruffly. “Who are you?”

“My name is Amar Petrovic. I’m the person who called to tell you about Millie sixteen years ago.”

Mack’s mind flashed back to receiving that call. A man called to tell him a baby had resulted from an affair Mack had in Bosnia. Mack went to Bosnia, basically kidnapped Millie, and brought her back to the United States. He waited nervously for years for someone to show up and try to take her back. No one ever had. He thought she was safe after sixteen years. Apparently, he was wrong.

“Why are you here now? And what do you mean Millie’s in danger?” Mack said, glaring at Amar.

“When Nejra became pregnant, she told everyone—including me—she had been raped and that she didn’t know the identity of her attacker. Everyone except one person—her aunt Azayiz. When Nejra was murdered, Azayiz feared the baby would be killed, too. She gave me your name and number with the instructions to call you and tell you to rescue the baby.”

“I did that. Millie’s safe. No one has ever tried to locate her.” Mack put his gun back in his waistband.

“Until now, no one cared. Her uncle Sayid was actually grateful you took her. You know who he is now—a terrorist. But when Millie was born, he was not yet cold-blooded. The elders were pressuring him to kill the baby. He never could have done that to his sister. Nejra was his world.”

“So what changed his mind? I’m assuming you think he’s coming after her now.”

“No. Not Sayid. Yusef Hadzic. The three of us were childhood friends. Yusef followed Sayid into the terrorist network. I fled Bosnia for Spain. I’ve done my best over the past fifteen years to eliminate them completely from my life. But last week, Azayiz contacted me. She moved back to her native Pakistan after her husband was killed in the Bosnian War.” Amar paused and took a deep breath. “Since returning, she has been an informant for the CIA. I didn’t know that until last week. She has apparently been informing on Sayid’s network for years. Her son, Fareed, is part of the network. I think he’s been providing her information. Yusef found out about it and has put a bounty on her head. The CIA moved her into protective custody. She told me last week Yusef was trying to draw her out of hiding by targeting the one person in this world she would die protecting—your daughter.”

Mack sat down at the table. He stared at Amar for a few minutes before responding. “Why would a woman who hasn’t seen Millie in sixteen years care whether she lives or dies?”

“When Nejra’s parents died at the beginning of the war, Azayiz became like a mother to her. When Nejra was murdered, all the love Azayiz felt for her was transferred to Millie.”

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