“Hello, Jane,” Zaki had said as he joined them.
“How are you?”
He studied the ground a moment, his hands held in that awkward triangle men seemed to create when they were thoughtful. A wry smile touched his expression.
“Not so good. I don’t like it when people lie to me.”
“I don’t either.”
“Yes, well, some lies are worse than others.”
He gestured to the security guy on my right and all I could think was, Hell, Max was right! Who would have thought Zaki would be as brazen as to take me off the streets?
The security guy ripped my purse out of my hands and dropped it in the mouth of the alley, then forced me sideways, directing me to a van waiting just inside the alley. We all got in together and the vehicle roared into life, pulling easily into the San Antonio traffic. They tied my hands behind my back and forced me onto my side. One of the security guys was missing, which meant he’d stayed behind to watch the alley. Did that mean they knew about Max? Was he in danger?
That’s when I began to panic.
I’d gotten too cocky and now Max might be in trouble. What had I done?
I’d been trained for this sort of situation, so I paid attention, listened for sounds that would tell me where we were going, listened to any conversation going on in the vehicle, studied faces and memorized features. I wasn’t sure what good all that was going to do, but I did as I’d been taught.
And then Zaki got a call. He listened for a moment, disconnected and made a call of his own.
“I don’t know who you are or what you and your girlfriend think you have on me, but I’m telling you right now that if you go to the cops, she’s dead before you disconnect the call. Understand?”
As I listened to him speak, I knew two things immediately: Zaki was talking to Max. And I was likely not going to make it out of this alive.
The knowledge that your death is impending should cause panic, but it actually has the opposite effect. This wasn’t the first time I’d been in a situation where I was certain my death was imminent. There had been two times while I was in the military where I’d felt there was no escape but death from my situation. Both times a surprise move by the enemy had saved my life. I didn’t anticipate that happening this time.
I was going to die. But that was okay as long as Max stayed safe and Ox was able to bring these fools down. I was okay with it.
That’s why, when the security guy stuck the phone up to my ear and told me to speak, I’d urged Max to keep Ox on target. They needed to go through with the raid no matter what. I knew they might hesitate if they thought I was in danger. I couldn’t let them do that.
The phone call done, we traveled for a good twenty minutes before the vehicle finally stopped. They put a handkerchief around my eyes to keep me from seeing where we were. That was a hopeful sign, but from the moment they led me out of the vehicle, I tensed, waiting for the sound of a gunshot at my back. I felt cool air on my face for a brief moment, then stuffiness, heat. We were inside. A door opened, and I was shoved. I stumbled and fell, bruising my hip. I pulled myself up and slid back against a wall, listening for footsteps or just heavy breathing. There was nothing.
I waited a long while, listening. As time passed and there was no noise, no movement, I began to work at getting my hands free. They’d tied me up with a piece of cord. The more I pulled on it, the tighter the cord became. I finally stopped, deciding it wasn’t going to come off. Instead, I started rubbing the back of my head against the wall, working at the bandana. It fell away easily. The room was dark, almost as dark as my world had been with the bandana over my eyes. It took a second before my vision adjusted.
I knew the room almost immediately. It looked a little different without the round card table and recliner, but I knew I was in a storage room behind what used to be a strip mall shop. This was the building where the second rave I’d attended was held.
I worked my way up to my feet and slowly began to walk around, exploring. There was nothing there, really. No window. No furniture. The walls were concrete, as were the ceiling and floor. Moisture came in through the concrete, making the room humid on top of stale and hot. There was no air movement, no air conditioning. There were two doors, one that entered into the storefront, one that opened into the alley. I tried both and both were locked securely.
I was still alive. That meant that Zaki wanted something from me. But what? Was he still planning to send me off to Bahrain with all his other potential prostitutes? It didn’t seem likely, but I didn’t know for sure what it was he thought he knew.
Clearly he knew about Max. What else did he know? Had he seen us together at some point? Did he know we worked for Caballo? Did he know there were others gathering information on him? Or was he still flailing around in the dark?
I didn’t know what to expect. They could walk in here at any minute and kill me. Or they could leave me here to die of starvation and dehydration. Or they could let me go. I had no idea and it was the not knowing that was driving me crazy.
I paced the entire room over and over again, needing to move, needing to do something. I couldn’t just sit and wait. My ears strained for any sound, but there was nothing. This room was well insulated, blocking all sounds from beyond the door. There could be an army outside that door and I wouldn’t know it. Or they could have abandoned me. I wouldn’t know that, either.
As I walked, my thoughts filled with panic. I had to concentrate on something other than my predicament. I thought about my father for a moment, but that just increased my fear. What if I didn’t make it out of this? What would happen to him? His pension wasn’t enough to pay for the living-assistance center. Would they send him to a state-run nursing home? What would happen then? Who would take care of him?
Then I thought of Aaron and the promise I’d made him. I would be letting him down if I didn’t survive this.
But then my thoughts moved to Max. Hell, my thoughts were always filled with Max.
I leaned back against the wall and thought about the kisses we’d shared in that alley. Max had a reputation. People at work talked about how he liked the women, how he had a different woman in his bed every weekend. I didn’t really believe it was quite like that because all the guys at work—those who weren’t in a committed relationship—liked everyone to think they were Casanovas of one sort or another. A lot of it was just talk. But Max… it was clear he knew his way around a woman’s body, that he knew what he was doing when he kissed me. But was that really such a bad thing?
I’d never felt quite the way I did when he kissed me that day. Yeah, I was angry at the time and any sort of passionate emotion will make something like that more intense. Maybe it was just the high emotion, the situation, that made it so good. Or maybe it was Max. I’d had these thoughts for a long time—I suppose you could call them fantasies—about him. Imagining the way it would feel when he kissed me. The way it would feel when he touched me. Some of my thoughts went much further than that, but it was all in my mind, all just a game I played with myself. But I couldn’t shake this sense of weakness that came over me every time I was in the same room with him.
Attraction is a funny thing. I was convinced that I disliked him from the moment we met, yet I couldn’t stop admiring his body, his good looks, his charm. And when he turned that charm on another woman—he loved to flirt with Skylar!—there was this dark feeling that washed over me that made my hatred for him that much stronger.
I prided myself in believing that I was above the pettiness of other women, but maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was just as weak when it came to the opposite sex as anyone else.
And now I’d gotten him in a bad position and I hated that I was impotent to fix it.
I began walking around again, pacing the room. I couldn’t sit still because then I let my thoughts go down a road I couldn’t go down now.
But Max was there, weighing heavy on my thoughts.
I don’t know how much time passed. It could ha
ve been minutes, it could have been hours. It could have been a day.
The click of a lock unfastening filled the room. Someone was coming in.
I moved to the back of the room and pressed my back to the wall, waiting. The door seemed to open excruciatingly slowly. When it was finally open, all I could see was darkness beyond, just the vague shapes of the abandoned storefront that had been opened up and then left unfinished. I waited, my head lowered, listening as hard as I could for any sign of what was about to happen.
Was this it? Had they come to get rid of me?
“Hello, Jane.”
My heart sank. I was so focused on dying that I hadn’t considered other possibilities. Now…
It was Collin McFadden and he had lust in his eyes.
Chapter 18
Max
I obeyed the rules. I went back to the apartment.
How did they know about me? What had I done to give myself away? Had they seen us on the street together, seen me outside one of the parties? Or had they seen us in the apartment together somehow?
I kept thinking about Ox telling us he could hear us outside the apartment door. Had someone come up to her door and heard my voice? Had that tipped them off?
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d put James in danger. Our intention had been for her to be taken by the traffickers, but I was supposed to be following her, identifying their location and rescuing her at the same time we took down the bad guys and hopefully rescued the client’s kid.
But she was out there all on her own. I didn’t even know if she was still alive.
I got her into this mess. I had to get her out.
I went to the computer and began sifting through the information Cheryl had been feeding me over the past few weeks, information on each of the key players. Zaki Ahsan owned property all around the San Antonio area. If he was holding her, he had to have her at one of these places because he wouldn’t risk involving anyone else. There were three prime possibilities.
He owned a farmhouse twenty miles south of San Antonio. That seemed too far. He’d want her close by in case things went south.
He owned—through a dummy corp—a strip mall not far from downtown. It was there that he held the second rave James went to. I thought it was a possibility he might have her there, but it seemed unlikely because it was in a popular area very close to the busy commerce area of the city.
He owned a house in a suburb of San Antonio. This seemed the most likely spot to take her because it was private but large enough to drown out any noise that might draw attention to it. Like screams…
I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things criminals might do to an unarmed woman. Especially a woman as petite as James. Then again, they had no idea that she had extensive training in the military. She could be a force to be reckoned with.
I hoped she was beating the shit out of those fools right now!
I focused on the house, looking up property records for that house and all the ones in the neighborhood, putting together a rough plan in my head. If we went in from the south… that house was empty so no one would notice. The security system would be easy to disarm. If we had enough people…
A pounding came on the front door. I jumped, so lost in thought that I didn’t realize what it was at first. Then I thought it was a mistake, wrong address. I used the peephole, peeking to see who was standing in the hall, realizing at the last second that Ahsan would probably have people watching my apartment, could have someone stationed right there in the hallway. And here was Akker, pounding on the door, trying to get in.
“They’re watching me!”
“How do you know?”
“They told me. Said I had to stay in the apartment, alone, or they’d kill her!”
Akker pulled out his phone. “I’ll check it out.”
I went back to the computer, snatching up the burner phone that had been sitting on the desk and sliding it into my pocket. They’d call. He said they’d call if they… they’d call before they hurt her.
“I think he has her in his house. It’s the most obvious place.”
“We already have it under surveillance.”
“Have you seen anything? Is there any movement?”
Akker shook his head, his phone pressed to his ear.
I turned away, studying the records again, trying to find the best way inside. He had to have her there. Nothing else made sense.
“There’s a guy on the street,” Akker said. “They don’t think anyone’s in the building.”
“They don’t think—but they don’t know.”
“It’s a possibility, Max, but this organization seems to have grown cocky. They don’t go out of their way to hide their tracks. There’s no reason to think they’re smart enough to hack the security system of the apartment building. Besides, if they had, they would have tripped an alarm Cheryl had put in that would have alerted us to activity. It hasn’t gone off.”
I nodded, already aware of everything he’d said. I’d been on this case for two weeks; I knew it better than him! But it still didn’t wipe away the unreasonable fear at the back of my mind that I was about to cause her to get killed. That my actions were going to blow back on James.
“We have to find her. We have to raid his properties.”
“We’re working on it.”
“You said you were going to run a raid on the house tonight. Is that still on?”
“No. We couldn’t get law enforcement behind us, so Ox decided to sit back and watch.”
“Watch? But what if that Porter kid is in that house? What if they have James there?”
“No one has seen any evidence that they might have James in the house.”
“Just because they haven’t seen her—”
“Ox is aware of what’s happened, Max. He’s working on a plan.”
“We need to find her!”
“I know.”
Akker sat heavily on the edge of my desk and stared down at his hands for a moment. “We’re all worried about James, but we can’t let emotion interfere with a strong, logical plan to extricate her. Do you understand?”
“I fucked up.” I lowered my head, fighting back emotion that I hadn’t realized was right there beneath the surface. “I shouldn’t have let her leave the apartment alone. She said she was going to the store; I told her to wait a minute but she was out the door before the words were even completely out of my mouth. I left a minute or two later, thought I’d get there quickly enough, but I guess I didn’t.”
“James is a trained operative. She knew the danger of leaving here alone and made her choice. It’s no one’s fault.” Akker laid a hand firmly on my shoulder. “But you are closest to this case. We need your insight, any information you can offer, to help find her. We need you in the office.”
“How do you plan on getting me there without Ahsan’s men seeing?”
“Through the parking garage.”
“There’s no one in the hall? No one in the elevator? No one in the garage?”
“Just our people.”
“Okay.” It was worth a try. “But I get to be on the team that runs the raid when it goes down.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
I jumped to my feet, eager now that we had something like a plan. As promised, there was no one in the hall, the elevator, or the garage. Akker had me lie down in the back of the sedan and he drove us out of the garage, easy as pie.
“We’re going to get her back. You know how determined Ox can be when he sets a plan into action. No one and nothing stands in his way.”
“I’m counting on it.”
Chapter 19
James
He smiled as he strolled through the door.
“How are you, Jane?” he asked, emphasizing the name as if it were a crude slur. “I understand you’ve been a bad girl, Jane.”
I had never wished more strongly to have a weapon. Just a little knife hidden in my sleeve or a small gun hidden in my boot. But I w
asn’t wearing boots and you couldn’t hide shit in the thin sleeves of this blouse.
I watched him come toward me, this Irish asshole with nothing but lust in his eyes. Collin McFadden. He’d been arrested and charged nine times with sexual assault in his native country, but—miraculously—had managed to get off every time. Probably had something to do with the fact that his dad was a powerful businessman with a lot of politicians in his pocket. No wonder the older McFadden sent his son out of the country. One arrest here and he would discover that his luck hadn’t crossed the ocean with him.
“Nothing to say?” he asked, sauntering across the room to stand in front of me.
“Touch me and Ahsan will cut your hands off!”
“Yes, well, Ahsan is no longer in charge, darlin’. He never really was.”
“Didn’t look that way the other day when he was barking orders at you. And you…” I smiled slowly, “I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite the personification of a human tucking his tail between his legs quite like the show you put on!”
He backhanded me, sending my head rocking back against the wall. I’d expected that. I raised a knee even as my head was still moving, slamming it into his balls.
“Fucking bitch!” he cried, jumping back and pressing a hand to his injured jewels. “You really are a hellcat, aren’t you?” His leer came back. I hadn’t gotten quite the power I’d wanted to and he recovered quickly, coming toward me again. He grabbed my thighs and held them together, pressed back against the wall so that I couldn’t try again. But he hadn’t bargained on my head.
I thrust my head forward the moment we stood eye to eye. My forehead connected with his nose, blood bursting everywhere as the cartilage cracked and shattered.
“Goddamn!” he cried, jerking back from me again.
I ran for the door. Idiot had left it standing open and I saw my chance. He was doubled over, blood pouring from his nose down over his chin and chest, soaking his shirt. He didn’t see what I was doing until I was through the door. I heard him yell out at me, but I didn’t hesitate. I ran full on for the front of the building, not pausing to see if anyone else was in there with us. I didn’t see movement, didn’t feel hands reaching for me. I was home free, just another few yards.
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