Safe at Last

ONE

ZACK Covington simmered with impatience as he waited for the go signal from his team leader. He didn’t know exactly what was going on in the basement of the McMansion—not unlike the house he’d once dreamed of building for the girl he’d planned to spend forever with—but he knew it wasn’t good. Sometimes bad lurked in seemingly benign locations. People existed in denial that it could happen in their little corner of the world. How very wrong they were.

It was a lesson he’d learned the hard way. Coming from a small town nestled against the shores of Kentucky Lake, he’d thought—just as most of its citizens had thought—that they were impervious to bad. And Zack? He was more confident about that than most, because his father was the chief of police, and he’d grown up knowing his father’s job was to ensure the safety of the town, regardless of size.

But he’d damn sure failed when it came to Gracie. Everyone had failed her and Zack had led the pack. His father’s refusal to use county resources on someone who didn’t belong anyway had caused a rift between Zack and his father that to this day hadn’t been mended.

It never would be.

Zack sighed as he contemplated the stately homes, the expensive cars, the swimming pools behind high privacy fences, the immaculately landscaped yards. The white-collar families who resided in the gated community that boasted top-notch security would be horrified to know that evil lurked in their midst. The irony of it all was that the affluent neighborhood had recently been voted the safest and most desirable community in the greater Houston area. Hell, it had scored in the top five in the entire state of Texas and in the top twenty for the whole country. So yeah, these people were utterly convinced that they were safe.

But he knew better. Inside was a child. Just a baby. Well, not so much a baby, since she was only two years younger than his Gracie. Goddamn it. Not here. Not now. It was no time for the past to intrude. Besides, Gracie was hardly the beautiful, innocent sixteen-year-old girl he’d loved more than a decade ago. She’d be twenty-eight now.

If she was even alive.

And she wasn’t “his” Gracie anymore. She wasn’t his anything.

Maybe he hadn’t been able to save Gracie. Maybe he’d failed her. But over his dead body would he fail this young girl whose dreams were as big as the sun. Not when the two most important people in her life—or at least the two who should have been the most important—had failed her in every possible way.

Alyssa Lofton had been a very promising ballerina at an early age, a fact her mother had taken pride in when she’d participated in kindergarten recitals and received high praise and glowing accolades both locally and across the state. Later, when the demands of her training had encroached on her mother and father’s social life, Alyssa had fallen far down the list of their priorities.

Until the father had received pointed threats, aimed at Alyssa.

The Loftons had five children, with Alyssa being the middle child, between two older brothers and two younger sisters. When Howard Lofton had called in Devereaux Security Services, it had disgusted Zack that the man seemed irritated not that his daughter was being threatened, but that he wasn’t the subject of the threat. It was a blow to his ego that evidently he was not as important as his daughter.

A pompous, arrogant pig who had no business having children. His wife was no better. Zack could only dream of the life they had—a life he once thought he would have—with a houseful of children. Happy. And yet the couple was more concerned with their social standing than the care of their children.

They’d hired a nanny and it was the nanny who attended all sports events and dance recitals and provided the love and support the parents should have. And now she was dead, shot when trying to protect one of the younger Lofton children after masked men had burst into the auditorium where the dance recital was being held and cut the lights, causing instant chaos as gunfire erupted.

The father? Had dropped like a fucking coward, hiding behind his wife, while the nanny had saved his son. Zack would like to put a bullet right between the asshole’s eyes for that alone.

Howard and Felicity Lofton hadn’t even been there so they could see their daughter shine. They’d attended solely because the CEO of another oil company also had a daughter performing and Howard was in negotiations to merge the two companies because the competitor was looking to retire and Howard wanted to take over both companies and expand his “empire.” Hell, he and his wife hadn’t even sat with their children. They’d left the nanny to tend to the kids while they sat a row back talking business and their daughters performed.

The target had been Alyssa. And Alyssa had been Zack’s responsibility. Hell, she was all of DSS’s responsibility, but Zack had been the closest, and in the clusterfuck that had ensued, a hysterical woman had blocked his pathway to Alyssa, a mere foot away, getting shot in the process, and Alyssa had been abducted in a professionally executed hit.

This was no amateur operation, and Zack had to wonder why someone would go to such lengths to kidnap the child of a high-profile oil mogul when the man took absolutely no security precautions, and if any research on Howard Lofton had been done at all and ransom had been the aim, he would have been the obvious choice.

Lofton would give up a hell of a lot of money for his own life. But for his children? Even Zack knew the answer to that, and he’d only briefly made the man’s acquaintance. He’d despised Lofton on sight because he grudgingly had to part with some of his precious money to protect his daughter for “appearance’s sake.” After all, it wouldn’t do for it to get out that a father had ignored threats to his child, and above all else, Howard Lofton had an ego the size of the state he resided in.

When the silence through his earpiece continued—and he’d already waited an interminable amount of time—Zack lost what was left of his patience. Fuck it. He was going in. The Loftons might not give two fucks about their daughter, but Zack did, and he wasn’t about to sit on his hands when each passing second could mean the difference between life and death.

Stealthily, he crept toward the window of the guest room. DSS had pulled the floor plans of the housing developments—they were cookie-cutter houses, after all—and quietly inserted his knife around the edges and bottom of the window to loosen the panes. Only when he was able to slide the window upward did he whisper into the comm, “I’m in.”