“You have him wrapped around your finger.” Thad chuckled.
I didn’t ask Thad which him he was referring to. I knew he was talking about Declan, and the thought anyone could wrap Dec around anything was absurd.
“Hardly.”
“You totally do and it’s good to see. Dec keeps his cards close to his vest, always has, he shares bits and pieces when he wants. I knew something bad happened, but until the other day, I didn’t know how bad. Knowing what I know now, I never should’ve said what I said when we were in Afghanistan. I feel like a dick.”
“You shouldn’t. And, yes, what happened to Declan was beyond tragic. The worst kind of pain a person can feel, losing his daughter and wife. But sometimes it takes someone close to you, someone you respect, to smack you in the head before you wake up and look around. I think he’s finally decided to look around. We both have, and we’re finding that there are people around us who care. But for him and me, that’s hard to accept, so you need to push every once in a while. But understand when he pushes back.”
“You’re perfect for him and it fucks me to say this, but I admit I wasn’t sure. Both of you…”
“Are screwed up,” I supplied.
Thad huffed then smiled. “I won’t go that far.”
“Lighten up, brother-in-law.” I nudged his shoulder. “He lets me be me,” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“He accepts that I’m broken and doesn’t try to fix me, but at the same time, he is. It’s scary and exciting, and I’m terrified I’m gonna mess everything up, but at the same time, I don’t think he’d let me mess it up. He says it’s me, that I’m the only one strong enough to patch him back together. He’s that for me, too. It had to be him. Not Mom and Dad. Not Emmy. Not you.”
“We get it. And maybe one day you’ll understand that you can just be you with us, too.”
“I’m getting there, Thad. It’s just gonna take time.”
Thad leaned forward and kissed the top of my head.
And I let him.
I was pretty damn proud of myself.
Ten minutes later, I was fully kitted out with weapons and ready to roll. It took five minutes longer than it should’ve because I’d stopped to peruse the wall of sniper rifles on display. I wasn’t a gun person per se, they were tools I used for my job. But the display was impressive, made more so because I knew each of those rifles were custom made. Zane Lewis wasn’t rich—he was filthy rich.
“Brooks went up to supply and grabbed you a vest and the rest of your gear. Are you going to be okay in jeans or do you need cargos?” Thad asked on the way back up.
“Jeans are fine,” I assured him.
“This should be an easy in and out.”
“Are you worried about me?” I teased, and Thad pinned me with his brown eyes and frowned. “I know what I’m doing.” His frown deepened and I sighed. “Seriously. I’ll be fine.”
His gaze dropped to my still-healing throat and he mumbled, “Right.”
Jeez. Touchy.
“You ever been hurt on the job?”
Silence. He had.
“And did it stop you from going back out? Did your teammates coddle you and ask you to sit out the next mission?”
“No one’s coddling you. I’m concerned.”
“I appreciate your concern. But I’m fine. And again, I know what I’m doing and all of you will be there to have my back.”
The elevator doors slid open and I was assaulted with chaos.
Brooks walked by and tossed a vest in my direction. I grabbed it before it fell. Then I noticed more men now filled the office space.
“That’s Blue Team. Gabe, Owen, Kevin, and Myles.”
My eyes went directly to the man named Owen. He looked no less angry than the last time I saw him. As a matter of fact, he looked more agitated.
“What’s going on?” Thad asked Dec as he made his way to us. “Any word?”
“Garrett picked up the car northbound over the Francis Scott Key Bridge.”
“Dundalk?” Thad weirdly asked.
“Doubtful. If she’s looking for privacy, she won’t find it there.”
“Sparrows Point,” Thad returned.
“That’d be my guess, but we’ll wait and see if she exits.”
“What’s Sparrows Point?”
“A large industrial area. It was owned by Bethlehem Steel. Now Amazon has a distribution center there,” Dec explained.
“Too busy. A distribution center would have employees around the clock. Trucks in and out. What else is around there? More privacy.”
“There’s a cement factory and coal plant on the south side. If she waited until after closing, she’d have all the privacy she wanted,” Thad added.
“That’s hours away,” I noted, and held out the 300 blackout rifle I was holding. Declan took it and I put on the heavy bulletproof vest and kept talking but lowered my voice so Owen wouldn’t hear. “Ash is patient to extract the information she wants but impatient to start. She wouldn’t drive around with this woman in her car all day.”
An ugly nagging started in my stomach and crawled its way up to my heart. How was it possible to know someone so well but not know anything about them? I still couldn’t believe my friend had lied to me. Why wouldn’t she just tell me her father was involved with Pollaski? It didn’t make what happened to her mother any less horrific. I was missing something. Tex and Beth were missing something.
“We’re missing something,” I voiced my concerns.
“Hold that thought,” Dec told me. “We’re ready to roll, we’ll talk it out on the way.”
Zane started in our direction, with Owen and the other three men following behind him.
“Gold, you take point.” Zane made eye contact with Declan. “I called the Baltimore County Mayor and explained we’re running drills in the area. That means you have a cunt hair of leeway, but this is not the wild wild west and I’d prefer my night not be spent getting you out of lockup.” Then Zane’s gaze moved to Owen. “And you, lock your shit down. You were taking a shower for fuck's sake. You didn’t miss anything because there was nothing to miss. No threats were made.” Zane’s eyes came to mine and they narrowed. “Don’t get dead, don’t get hurt, don’t even get a motherfucking scratch. You’re already a supreme pain in my ass. If I have to deal with a gonzo Declan and Thad, which means Emerson, Violet, and Jaxon will be breathing down my neck, too, I’ll be seriously fucking pissed.”
“Your concern warms my heart.” My snarky comeback earned me a growl from Zane and snort from Brooks.
“Christ. Pain in the ass,” Zane grunted and walked away.
“Takes one to know one,” I called to Zane’s back.
“Can we go?” Owen barked.
I looked up at the man and barely held back my flinch. Open pain, stark fear, extreme anger. Owen seriously cared about Natasha.
“We’ll find her,” I gently told him.
“Right, but will she be breathing when we do?”
That was a question I didn’t want to answer.
To use Zane’s description, Owen already looked gonzo, was as big as a house, and didn’t look like he actually expected an answer.
Ashaki better have a damn good explanation for taking Natasha. Damn good. Or she wouldn’t be left breathing.
I wasn’t certain how I felt about that. What I did know was, I was questioning everything that had led me to this moment. Every action. Every decision. The trust I’d put into someone who clearly hadn’t trusted me. And the uncomfortable truth was, I didn’t want this life anymore.
Chapter 32
The six of us were packed into a company SUV, Owen and his team following behind us. We’d barely pulled out of the underground garage when Thad shifted in his seat and looked back at Autumn.
“Explain what you think we’re missing.”
“Ash isn’t sloppy. She was FBI then CIA, which means she knows how to avoid traffic cameras. That’s not a rookie mistake, that’s plain c
areless. Ash doesn’t do careless, she plans down to the smallest of details. She taught me to be methodical. Something has her tweaked. I think this is personal.”
“Personal?”
“If Ash didn’t use Beth, then she’d use Shepherd to get her intel.” Autumn ignored Thad’s direct question and continued. “I should’ve thought about contacting him before. Beth has strong morals and values, she doesn’t cross into the gray area we sometimes have to go. Shep loves gray, he’d be all over helping Ash and he wouldn’t question what she was doing with the intel he provided. So, if Ash needed information on Natasha that she knew Beth would have an issue with, she’d go to Shep. And if Beth would have an issue with it, that would mean Ash tracking down a woman who was a victim, watching her, then taking her, well, that makes it personal.”
“That’s a stretch,” Brooks noted. “We don’t know Natasha’s identity. Owen’s in deep, he could be missing something. She might not be as innocent as she wants to believe.”
“What makes a person careless? What makes them impulsive? What makes them forget all their training and act on emotion?” Autumn asked.
“When your mission turns personal,” I answered. “Autumn’s right. Maloof’s been one step ahead of us since Bahrain. She’s smart, trained well, and wouldn’t fuck up by getting caught on a traffic camera.”
“Who the fuck is this woman Natasha?” Max asked. “Why does she matter to Maloof? Can you get in touch with this Shepherd?”
“I can try, but Shep is about the drama. He makes you go through a series of emails and tests before he calls you back. It could take days. He likes to call himself a Red Hat Hacker. But really he’s in it for the money and charges five times what Beth charges. Most of the time his drama’s not worth the hassle. But Ash uses him a lot.”
“I don’t know what a Red Hat Hacker is and I don’t care enough for you to explain. Send him an email and see if he’ll call,” Max told her.
“Thad, call Tex.”
“I will if you stop weaving in and out of traffic and I can stop white-knuckling the oh-shit bar long enough to get my phone,” Thad complained from next to me.
I glanced down at the speedometer. “I’m barely pushing ninety. Quit bitchin’ and call Tex.”
Thad did not do as I asked. Instead, he craned his neck to look at Autumn. “Advice, don’t ever let Declan drive. This is tame. This is slow. When he’s in a hurry, even worse.”
Then Thad straightened in his seat and fucking finally did as I asked and called Tex.
“Zane checked in,” Tex said by way of greeting. “Said you’re on the road.”
“Yeah,” I confirmed. “Listen, Autumn mentioned a guy named Shepherd, you know him?”
“Yeah, he’s bad news, thinks he some sort of vigilante inserting viruses on other hackers’ machines, but not before he steals their data and sells it. A Black Hat pretending to be a Red Hat. Total asshole.”
There was that term again, Red Hat, Black Hat, Ass Hat, I didn’t give the first fuck what he wanted to call himself.
“Maloof uses him.”
“Shit.”
“You think you can get into his machine and find what he gave Maloof?” Autumn asked before I could.
“I can get into his system. It’ll take a while, but I won’t find anything. Data isn’t kept on a machine hooked to the network. Which means I gotta spend hours backtracking his searches. It won’t be as simple as pulling a file. I said he was an asshole, not stupid. Tell me what you’re thinking, Autumn.”
Autumn gave Tex a quick rundown of her thoughts and when she was done, Tex agreed.
“Natasha’s definitely the key. Her prints weren’t in the system. At the time I didn’t give it much thought. Now that Maloof’s involved, I’m thinking she had Shepherd wipe her identity, which also means when we do get her DNA back that’s gonna be a wash, too.”
“How’s that fucking possible?” Kyle asked.
“It’s easier than you think. And you think someone ran your prints or DNA you’d ping? Garrett has all of you covered.”
“We’re still twenty minutes out,” I told Tex.
“And I got nothing for you,” Tex replied.
That was a first.
“Got another call, Tex, we’ll be in touch,” Thad said and changed lines. “Got anything?”
“Maloof took exit 43. She’s headed toward the shipyard entrance,” Garrett told us.
“Exit 43 off the 695, right?” Autumn asked.
“Yes. Off the exit, she turned right.”
“Okay, so toward the Fed Ex building?” Autumn continued, obviously looking at a map on her phone. “There’s a location on my map, Tom Point. I see three buildings, she’ll be in one of those. I’m assuming that huge lot with all the cars is an auto import storage lot. When she’s done, she’ll jack one of those if she can’t find a vehicle closer. But she will not exit in the same car she drove in using.”
“How do you know that?” Garrett asked.
“Because that’s what I’d do and she taught me most of what I know. The Google image I’m looking at was taken during a workday. There are cars parked around every business except this Tom Point. She won’t go farther because there’s a security gate. Which means a checkpoint and those are messy. The buildings are far enough away from the Fed Ex she won’t hit their cameras. Yet close enough to jack a car. There’s also a large wooded area she could easily disappear into. If you look back, you’ll find she’s already scouted this location. Actually, she might’ve already stashed a car there. That’s what I’d do. If you’ve got time to plan, which she did, there’s no point taking a chance stealing a car when you can plant your own.”
“I’ll dig back and see if I can find a car and hit you back.”
Garrett disconnected and no one spoke. That was, until Autumn had time to study the map longer.
“The best I can see using Google maps, which I have to say is useful in a pinch but I’d like real-time data to be positive. Tom Point is still my best guess. And I’d park my getaway car in the metro lot. There might be a camera there, but the car would be safe and I’d know it wouldn’t get towed. And it’s before that security gate. Easy access, quick in and out, major highway close by, and a private airport less than twenty miles away.”
Everyone in the car remained silent and my gut tightened at the excitement in Autumn’s tone.
No, not excitement. Maybe enthusiasm, passion, she was good at what she did. Unfortunately what she did was plot, plan, and execute sex traffickers. A deadly game that all players involved knew could easily turn, ending with you six feet under.
I didn’t want Autumn six feet under. I didn’t want her plotting, planning, or executing anyone. I wanted her ass safely tucked away where nothing could ever touch her.
But fuck me, she sounded happy.
Her earlier question burned my insides.
I had no fucking idea how I’d survive knowing she was hunting.
Christ. The very thought cut deep.
I didn’t want this life for her.
Hell, I didn’t even want it for me.
“Autumn was spot on,” Garrett said over the radio. “Myles already disabled the car Maloof left at the metro lot.”
“Copy.” I glanced around the grounds of Tom Point, still fifty yards from our target.
Three windowless cinder block buildings, all varying in size. The smallest was the size of a bathhouse, the largest the size of a small house. Garrett had been unable to find blueprints on the structures so we were going in blind. The only thing we knew was that the land was owned by the cement factory. Best guess was they were storage.
A quick recon of the area didn’t produce much more than what we’d already known, which was next to nothing. But we didn’t find any exterior security camera, and no windows meant we could move around undetected. Which was a good thing, because there wasn’t a damn place to hide behind. The area immediately surrounding the buildings was barren.
“Team three in plac
e,” Brooks announced, and I looked in the direction he and Thad had disappeared.
“Team two on standby,” Kyle called in for himself, Max, and Gabe.
Something felt off. I wasn’t sure if it was the operation, or if it was dread that our target was someone Autumn considered a friend, or if it was Owen. I had serious concerns about the man; he was holding on by a thread.
“Kevin’s posted at the exit. She’s not driving out of here,” Garrett told me something I knew. “You’re clear to enter. Capture if possible. We’d like to question her.”
Having heard Garrett’s request for capture, Owen growled and my concern grew to doubt.
“Lock it down, brother,” I warned. I glanced to my left and I took in Owen.
Then my gut roiled. I knew that look, I’d seen it on Thad’s face when Emmy was kidnapped, I’d seen it on Max’s when Eva was taken to Alaska, I’d seen it on Kyle’s when Anaya was on the run with Tatiana and there was a seriously dangerous man tied up in the back of the car. I’d also felt it when my sister was taken to Brazil and nearly killed. And lastly, I’d tasted it when my wife and daughter had died in my arms.
It was then I knew I’d had enough, the acid had eaten away at the lining in my gut and it was burning straight through. If I continued, there’d be nothing left.
I’d be a pile of ash.
I was halfway there.
I’d bled enough.
I couldn’t take another motherfucking day feeling the poison leeching into my body. My soul. I’d served my country, I’d paid my dues, I bled, I leaked sweat and tears.
And right then, seeing another brother look like he was on the edge of losing his ever-loving mind, I remembered that taste and I knew there wasn’t a goddamn thing I was going to say to make the bitter taste palpable.
“Do what you gotta do, Owen. All I ask is you give Autumn a chance to talk her down. Maloof needs to answer for what she’s done, but there might be more at play and Autumn needs a chance to work that angle. Beyond that, I ain’t gonna stop you. But something else you need to keep in mind, when this is over, Natasha’s gonna need you. So my suggestion would be to lock your shit down. That way at the end of this, you can take your woman home and see to her.”
Declan (Special Forces: Operation Alpha) (Gold Team Book 5) Page 21
