Page 5 of Arsonist’s Match (Blaze and Badge #1)

Houston, the next evening

“ A gents Ice, Hernandez, I want eyes and ears in that room right now,” ordered Assistant Agent in Charge Athena Bouvier of Houston’s FBI Field Office.

With her long brunette strands clipped up above the collar of her sleek, summer-weight navy suit jacket, Athena commanded her operation from the back of a van parked on the street in front of a high-rise office building.

“Copy that,” ex-Marine Travis Ice replied sharply.

He slipped a slender com headset over his dark blond hair and adjusted the microphone around his trim beard.

The darker-complexioned Samuel Hernandez picked up a compact black case containing their surveillance gear.

Both men were built like linebackers for the Texans, only with guns, badges, body armor, and incident cams instead of pads.

“And be ready to breach on my mark—not before.” In case the piercing look in her hazel eyes wasn’t enough, Athena emphasized her directive with a pointed finger, nail polished in Dior Classic Rouge. “SWAT has the office covered from across the street, and our coordination must be precise.”

“Got it, boss,” Hernandez confirmed, and the two capable agents exited the van, leaving Athena with her right-hand tech specialist, John Paulson.

“Don’t worry, ASAC Bouvier,” he said calmly from his wheelchair, secured to the van floor at the electronics monitoring station.

“I gave them a top-of-the-line endoscopy camera on a semi-rigid, 16 foot wire, equipped with Bluetooth 5.0. It’s got an 800-foot range, and the fifth floor isn’t half that from here, so we’ll get a clean feed. ”

Athena nodded. She trusted the veteran agent who’d been with the bureau longer than she had—even taken a bullet in the line of duty that put him in that chair—and if he said the equipment was sufficient, it was.

Having wrapped up the Los Diamantes task force over a month prior, she’d been engaging in routine, daily pop-up operations, while still grappling with the emotional toll of losing an agent.

Tonight, it was Zhang Fú’s abduction, the third cryptocurrency kidnapping of the summer, only this time they’d gotten lucky when a cleaning lady spotted two men forcing him into his office after hours and called 911.

The supposition was that the Chinese-American investment broker was snatched from the parking garage when he left work for the day.

Traffic cameras showed his vehicle leaving with the driver’s face obscured.

An hour later, the video went down. The first officers on the scene found Zhang’s car parked back in its place. The sweepers were going over it now.

“Can you give us what’s happening outside while we wait?

” Athena asked. Every second counted in incidents like this.

In the previous two, one victim escaped penniless, but alive; the second hadn’t been so lucky.

While the bureau hadn’t determined if the same crew had carried out all three short-term kidnappings, it was likely.

They were organized, efficient, and professional.

The victim who died had expired of multiple injuries after being transported to a hospital, and ASAC McCulloch, who headed that case, suspected the victim refused to give over the information required for the criminals to access his crypto account, resulting in excessive torture.

This time, FBI agents had arrived with the kidnappers still there, and Athena intended to have them in custody tonight.

“Sure.” Paulson pushed a button and turned a knob.

Three monitors lit up, one with a shot of the outside of the office building, one of FBI and SWAT vehicles blocking off the street, and another of the hostage negotiator, who had arrived about the same time they did.

The Houston Police Department was also on scene .

Gail Sweeney, a trained psychologist and experienced hostage negotiator, covered her phone and turned toward a man in a suit standing beside her. “I finally got someone to answer.”

Athena leaned in close to scrutinize the screen, the warm, spicy scent of Paulson’s aftershave filling her nostrils, her three-inch heels making a delicate tap against the van floor, the fine fabric of her skirt a soft whisper against her skin.

“Hello. This is Gail with the FBI. Who am I speaking with?”

“I want all y’all to back up and get out of here,” a man’s voice demanded from the other end of the call.

“Sweeney’s been trying to get someone to answer Zhang’s office phone for five minutes now,” Paulson supplied. “Seems someone finally did.”

“I can make that happen as soon as we know Mr. Zhang is all right,” Gail replied in an even, calm manner. “What’s your name?”

“You don’t need to know my name,” he snapped. Athena detected a distinct West Texas twang in his words, rather than Houston’s more common Southern drawl or Tex-Mex border varieties. This assailant hadn’t spent his entire life in Houston.

“All right, that’s fine. Can I call you Jack?” Gail asked. “Is it OK if I call you Jack?”

“I s’pose,” he grumbled.

“Jack, before I can order the police cars and SWAT vehicles to move away, I need to know that Mr. Zhang is alive. Could you put him on the phone, please?”

There was a pause and some shuffling noises. Athena picked up another man talking in the background, and then a baritone voice with a Mandarin accent said, “I’m alive—bastards have hurt me, though.”

“That’s enough!” shouted Jack. “See, he’s alive, but he’ll be hurtin’ more if you don’t back your people up.”

“OK, Jack,” Gail agreed. “We all want to go home in one piece at the end of the day. As a display of good faith, I’m going to talk to the police and SWAT captains and get these fellows pointing guns at your window to back away.

Then maybe you and I can talk about what it’ll take to let Mr. Zhang walk out of there. ”

“He leaves when we leave,” shouted the second man from a distance.

“Just back them up and then we’ll see,” Jack stated.

We’re outside the door. Eyes and ears coming online. Ice’s voice was a whisper in Athena’s earpiece, and she signaled Paulson.

“Our agents are feeding their camera under the door.”

Paulson switched the building monitor to the spy camera as it snaked along the floor.

At first, they only saw shoes and table legs.

Then the angle ticked up, and Athena was in the room.

A man in a blue button-up shirt and tie, who appeared to be in his mid-thirties, slouched in a chair with his hands zip tied behind his back.

His black hair was tousled, and both his face and the floor around his chair were bloodied.

“Are they moving yet?” A fidgety man asked the one holding the phone as he rushed to look out the window.

“Get back, you moron!” scolded Jack’s voice. “You want to get shot?”

Both men wore black coveralls, with gloves and ski masks covering their faces.

“The boss is gonna kill us,” the nervous man whined. His accent sounded more East Texas. “How’d they know? I mean, the other times went off without a hitch.”

Yeah, this crew’s been busy.

“Don’t know,” Jack snapped. He moseyed over to Mr. Zhang, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and yanked his head back, sweat and blood streaking his battered face.

“You’ve got about one minute to give up your keys, or we don’t need you anymore.

Get it? The fuckin’ feds are breathin’ down our necks, and we’ve gotta get out of here. ”

“Yeah, chink,” bellowed the second kidnapper. “Throwin’ you out that window would be a terrific distraction for our escape.”

“How do I know you won’t kill me anyway once I give you what you want?” Fú asked, his eyes flashing with horror.

“We sure as hell will if you don’t,” Jack said evenly .

On the other screen, Gail returned to say, “I just convinced the HPD and SWAT to relocate to the end of the block. If you glance out the window, you’ll see their vehicles and officers moving away.”

On the spy camera feed, Athena and Paulson watched Jack move cautiously toward the window. “Yeah, I see. That’s good.”

“See, Jack? We’re willing to be reasonable. Now, talk to me. What do you need so you can let Mr. Zhang walk out of his office?”

“Tell him if he doesn’t give us his crypto account keys, we’re going to blow his head off,” yelled the nervous criminal. He pulled a gun from his belt and pointed it at Zhang, rocking from foot to foot.

Covering the office phone receiver, Jack reprimanded him. “Shush, idiot!”

“No, really, man. If he ain’t gonna cooperate, we’d best off him and get out o’ here.”

“This is going south fast,” Hernandez whispered into Athena’s earpiece.

A radio on Paulson’s desk crackled. “Agent Bouvier, my guys have a shot. Should they take it?”

“Negative,” Athena commanded. “We need them alive to get to the leader and possibly recover millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. Here’s what I want you to do.”

While she presented her plan to the SWAT commander, Paulson continued to monitor the situation. Jack and Gail went back and forth over bargaining chips, while the other kidnapper paced the floor, pulled off his mask to wipe his face, and wrangled it back on again.

“The key, dammit!” He jabbed a taser into Fú’s neck, sending his body into spasms. “I’m givin’ you one more chance.”

“OK!” cried the hostage. “I don’t want to die!”

“Hear that, Bennie? Let’s get this bitcoin and get the hell out o’ Dodge!”

Returning her attention to the spy cam footage, Athena commented, “So Jack is really Bennie. We’re about to have them both. Ice?”

“We’re here,” he answered softly.

“Put on your CS gas masks, draw your weapons, and be ready to breach on my mark. SWAT’s shooting in a canister from across the street. ”

“Copy that.”

She keyed her radio to SWAT. “On my mark. Three, two, one, go!”

All three monitors showed various views and sounds as the tear gas can rocketed into the office.

Both kidnappers were occupied trying to secure the crypto account on Mr. Zhang’s laptop at the desk by the window and were caught completely off guard.

Agents Hernandez and Ice burst through the door shouting, “FBI! Hands in the air!” and “Don’t make me shoot you! ”

Both criminals bent over in coughing fits, unable to fight the agents even if they’d tried. No sooner had they been cuffed than a pair of EMTs wearing masks and pushing a gurney rushed in behind them to retrieve the victim.

“They didn’t get it, did they?” Mr. Zhang beseeched, bloodshot eyes wide. “They didn’t get my money, did they?”

“Mister, you almost died for that money,” remarked one of the first responders.

“Yeah, but I didn’t.” He burst into a coughing fit that turned into maniacal laughter.

“Exemplary work,” Athena praised over the coms. “Read those felons their rights and bring them in; then you can call it a day. I’ll handle it from there.”

“On our way, ma’am,” Ice confirmed in his pleasant East Texas drawl. “It’ll be like leading lambs to the slaughter.”

Athena raised a brow, though Agent Ice couldn’t see it; John Paulson snickered and shook his head.

Pursing her lips, she straightened, raising her unblemished chin.

Athena had worked hard to become known around headquarters as the ice bitch from hell, and she’d earned the moniker. Might as well be proud of it.