by Leroux, Lucy
Another mixed blessing. There was no family member with a stronger claim to Luna. That was good. They were going to get through this.
Ethan eased Julie back down on the pillow, covering her body with his. “I need you to do something for me.”
Confusion clouded her expression. “What?”
“I need you to forgive me for what I just did to you.”
Her lips parted.
“I know I hurt you,” he elaborated before she found her tongue. “Hell, I hurt you last night even though I didn’t realize it until this morning. But I had to ask.”
“I know.” Her face cleared a bit. “And it didn’t hurt.”
The stains on the sheets spoke to her lie, but it was a little white one. As long as he gave her time to recover, it wouldn’t matter.
He shifted positions, lying on his side and pulling her into him until they were spooning. Caressing her arm, he breathed in the scent of her hair. She had used his shampoo, but it smelled different on her. Better.
“I don’t want to, but I have to go soon. This is really bad timing, but I won’t be reachable today.”
“Because of the raid?”
“Yes,” he confirmed. “But don’t worry about anything. We can talk some more when I get back. We’ll figure everything out.”
She turned toward him. “What things?”
“Stuff—like how to make sure everything is aboveboard with you keeping Luna.” He rubbed her backside, unable to help himself. “That’s an issue that needs to be addressed. I’m sure there are more, but we’ll deal with all that later.”
In the distance, the toddler in question started to cry. Ethan glanced at his watch. “I have time to get her up and make her first bottle. Why don’t you stay here and take your time getting up? I’ll pass her off to you when I need to leave.”
Julie sniffed and nodded.
He left her alone to collect herself, feeling a mix of relief and concern.
This is way too much emotion before nine, he thought as he lifted Luna form her new crib. Impulsively, he cuddled her to him, letting her warm little body soothe his ragged soul.
He held her close until she wiggled away.
“Everything is going to be okay now. The worst is over,” he said.
But Ethan wasn’t stupid. He’d opened Pandora’s box last night when he took Julie to bed.
“Time to get ready, Little Moon.” He set the baby on the changing table. The transition to a new diaper happened in record time.
“I may be getting better at this,” he conceded before dressing Luna in one of the cozy outfits Maggie had bought. Then he stood her on top of the table, assessing his work critically.
She stared back, a contest of wills. Hers was stronger. Ethan broke and laughed, shaking his head before sobering.
“I know it’s been only you and your mom for a while now,” he told her in a low voice. “But I want you to know you have me now, too.”
Luna blinked. “Up,” she said imperiously, holding up her arms.
“Yes, Your Highness. Consider it done,” he said, slinging her up and carrying her to the kitchen.
Chapter Eighteen
The Lorano was late.
Ethan could tell the team was getting restless, but there was nothing he could do about it now. The only thing was to stay in position until the damn thing docked.
“At least it’s not a large freighter. Can you imagine if we had to wait for them to unload a bunch of these?” Jason asked, waving around at the empty shipping container they set up as a surveillance command center. According to the manifest, the Lorano would offload a bunch of crates, but no full-sized shipping containers.
Ethan grunted in response, his mind back in his apartment. He couldn’t stop rehashing the morning’s events in his head.
He’d texted Julie an update to say he’d be in late. Ethan didn’t ask her to stay up and wait for him, but he hoped she would.
“Hey, what’s up?” His partner scowled. “This op is not a complete wash yet. The ship will be here soon.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s not that.”
“If not the Lorano, what crawled up your butt and died?”
Ethan turned off the mic on his comm, signaling Jason to do the same. The team was maintaining radio silence, and he and Jason would hear them if they broke it. But the other guys didn’t need to listen to him discuss what an asshole he was.
“I slept with Julie last night.”
Jason nodded. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. I think we all saw that one coming after last night. Props for finally landing that plane by the way.”
Smirking, his partner paused. “Julie is way above your pay-grade. She’s like a Mexican Maggie. Not that I think you did it all on your own. Dinner with your awesome partner must have convinced her you weren’t a total deviant.”
“Julie looks nothing like your wife,” he said with a sniff. Maggie was pretty and all, but Julie was next-level sexy. He was probably biased, though.
Jason dismissed that. “I’m only referring to the general hotness level. I have no shame in admitting I damn near tripped going over to say hi to her.”
He was exaggerating, but only slightly. Despite being happily married, his partner had been close to drooling, though he’d hid it well. Most of the men in the room had done a double take when Julie took off her coat.
“All respect to my gorgeous wife—who I love more than anything,” his partner continued, “but after a slew of sevens and the occasional eight, you somehow pulled a ten and a half. Seriously, the girl is stacked. Julie looks like a character on a Mexican soap opera who begins as the ingenue, but is about to break out of that into the bad-girl role.”
“Enough.” Ethan groaned because his partner was right. “You need to shut your piehole now.”
Jason snickered. “I don’t see what your problem is. You’re into her. She’s into you. Plus, she’s smart and great with kids. Or is that the problem? Are you getting cold feet over getting mixed up with a single mom?”
“In a roundabout way, that is kind of the problem,” Ethan admitted, picturing Julie’s face when he had accused her of kidnapping.
A pen flew toward him, hitting him on the neck. “Seriously? That kind of shit is beneath you.”
Ethan picked up the pen, then threw it back.
“It’s complicated.” He rubbed the spot where the pen had hit even though it wasn’t bothering him. “Julie was a virgin until last night.”
Jason screwed his face up until the corners of his lips were next to his ears. “Hold up, how the hell does that work?”
Ethan sighed. “She’s not Luna’s birth mother. She’s her aunt. Her sister, Luna’s real mom, is dead—along with the rest of her family.”
“Oh, fuck. That’s some heavy shit.” Jason twisted in his chair. He waved his hand in a vague motion. “And you figured it out when you slid into home. That is…”
“Heavy shit?” Ethan finished.
Jason nodded, widening his eyes for emphasis. “Exactly.”
“Yeah, except I didn’t figure it out until this morning when I saw the state of the sheets. I did the math after that.”
His partner tsked in sympathy. “A virgin. I thought they cancelled those.”
“What about Maggie?” Jason’s wife had been inexperienced when he’d met her, too.
“Well, see, Mags being one makes sense. She had two older brothers constantly policing her every move before she met me. It’s rare to find one in the wild.” His mouth pulled down. “Poor kid.”
“Do you mean Julietta or Luna?”
“Both.” Jason checked the cams before turning back to him. “Hey, man, stop looking like you did something wrong by sleeping with her. You’re both consenting adults. She’s been living with you for weeks. It’s not your fault. You didn’t know she was a virgin. She was not precisely forthcoming about her status.”
“That’s true,” Ethan agreed, then winced. “Although, I’m not sure that excuses the f
act I basically accused her of kidnapping her own niece this morning. Looking back, Julie never lied outright, but she left a hell of a lot out whenever she talked about her past.”
“You mean the one where she grew up with scads of cash?”
Ethan raised his head. “You picked up on that, too?”
Jason fluttered his lashes. “I think we all did. After a few glasses of wine—which she held very well, by the way—she slipped up on the details. The woman is well-traveled, speaks French like a native, and knows how to use a fish knife.”
“I thought only Sergei noticed that.” Ethan had almost missed it, but he’d been talking with the Russian when Sergei had cocked his head at Julie’s hands, raising an imperious eyebrow in question. He’d gestured to Julie after she picked up the knife and started to use it with unconscious grace. Most of the others at the table hadn’t bothered with one—if they even knew what one was. He certainly hadn’t before sharing all those formal dinners at the Caislean.
“So…” Jason began more cautiously. “Given the circumstances, how much are we betting Julie is not her real name?”
Ethan considered that. “I’m almost sure it’s Julietta,” he said, pronouncing it the Hispanic way as if the J was an H. “I don’t think she meant to share it. But she was so ill that first night, her defenses were down.”
“Her family might have called her Julie,” Jason pointed out. “It could be a nickname. Especially if they spent time in Europe or here in the States.”
He thought it over, but that didn’t feel right. Whenever he used the name, her insistence on being called something else had been emphatic. Even being called Juliet had been too close for her comfort. Each time, she had reacted with dismay.
“Or they didn’t call her that, and she had to cover after telling me the real one. It’s possible she never meant to go by Julie at all,” he mused. “For all I know, the folks at Tully’s called her something else entirely.”
Jason scratched his head. “You think she’s gone that far to hide her identity?”
“I don’t know. It depends on whether she thinks the trouble she’s hiding from is going to follow her. And don’t bother telling me I need to figure that shit out. I already know I do. I just need to work out a way to get answers without making a total hash of it like I did this morning.”
His partner stood, checking the weapon at his side.
“Good, but we’re going to have to get your love life straightened out later.” He gestured to the screen where the Lorano was being tied to the dock. “Our ship has come in.”
Chapter Nineteen
“What do you mean there’s nothing?” Jason hissed, ready to tear someone’s head off.
Rivera, the strike team’s second, inclined his head to avoid being overheard by the Lorano’s crew, whom they’d lined up on their stomach on the dock, close together like a tin of sardines.
Everything had gone as planned. The team had let the Lorano dock. They’d held their position until the ship was unloaded. Once the bulk of the crates had been offloaded, they surrounded the vessel and boarded it.
There hadn’t been much action. The majority of the crew had given up without a fight, bemused at suddenly being swarmed by an armed group wearing navy windbreakers emblazoned with FBI in yellow letters.
“I mean there’s nothing,” Agent Rivera said, his tone perilously close to smug. “We’ve opened most of the crates on the dock, and it’s all regular goods—electronics and machine parts. No contraband.”
A few feet away, one of the Lorano’s crew had the temerity to smirk, despite being splayed on the rough wooden planks of the dock like yesterday’s catch.
Ethan narrowed his eyes at the men before walking farther away, forcing Jason and Rivera to follow him.
“No. These assholes are hiding something. Get some thermal cameras down here,” he ordered once he judged they were out of earshot. “Whatever we’re searching for, it’s still on the fucking ship.”
Rivera flicked him a look. “For your sake, I hope you’re right. You still owe me twenty bucks. It would be a damn shame if you got put on unpaid leave for this shit-show.”
Jason surreptitiously flipped off the other agent as he stalked away. “When did Rivera become such an asshole?”
“He’s getting a divorce,” Ethan said, dismissing their colleague’s behavior. “The poor fucker is sleeping on his partner’s couch.”
“Well, that sucks for him, but that ass has a selective damn memory. You paid him back last month. Remind me never to borrow any cash from him when I forget my wallet.”
“Yeah… Look, I’m going to do another circuit of the vessel.”
“You sure?” Jason wouldn’t admit it in front of Rivera, but it was obvious he was thinking they’d been set up for shits and giggles, too.
“The Lorano is a smuggling vessel, and I’m going to prove it.” Ethan climbed back over the deck railing with determined steps.
He ignored the rest of the milling search team, including the fact Agent Walsh was sneaking a fucking cigarette on the cramped boat’s bridge. Locating the steps down to the hold, he took them slowly, mulling over the situation.
The Lorano was small for a cargo vessel. It had one large central hold in the front of the ship, with the engines in the back. The remaining bit was a warren of twisting metal tunnels and small rooms for the crew—plenty of places to hide a small stash of guns or drugs.
Ethan went cabin by cabin, making a mental map. He’d gone over the crew space twice before realizing it was too narrow given the width of the ship.
Just like the f’ing Millennium Falcon, this place has smugglers compartments. And they were deep in the ship, far enough from the hull to mask them from surveillance tools like the IR cameras and thermal imaging.
Oh my fucking God, this is exactly like Star Wars, he thought when he realized where the secret compartment was. The hidden space was under his feet.
He was on his walkie the next minute. “Jason, get your ass over here. I need some help getting this shit open.”
It took both to find the seal to the top of the compartment. Ethan felt his well-used muscles protesting when they lifted the heavy steel partition off the top.
He and Jason gazed down into the dark hole in dismay. Eight pairs of terrified eyes stared back at them.
“Well, fuck me,” Jason muttered. The Lorano hadn’t smuggled nine boxes of guns or kilograms of heroin into the country. Their contraband was humans.
Chapter Twenty
Ethan studied the huddle of women shivering in the open air, glancing around them fearfully.
Of course it was an all-female group. The oldest appeared to be about twenty-three or four. The rest were younger.
Fuck. There weren’t enough blankets to go around, more proof this was the last thing they had been expecting. He took off his windbreaker, handing it to the nearest girl at the edge of the cluster—the one who looked about fourteen fucking years old.
She put it on without meeting his eyes, as if she were afraid to make contact. Beside him, Jason also took off his jacket.
“Are the ambulances on their way?” Ethan asked. “We need these women checked out.” God knew what had happened to them on the trip.
“Yeah, they’re on their way,” Jason confirmed. “Ten minutes out, tops.
“We haven’t found any other girls,” Rivera said, coming back to give him an update. The agent’s bad attitude had disappeared the minute they brought the girls abovedeck. “I think this is it.”
“Keep searching,” Ethan ordered in a low aside. “There’s one missing.”
The note had been clear. The Lorano had been carrying nine women, not eight.
Rivera nodded before disappearing into the crowd. More agents had been called in, as well as local PD, for backup. Somewhere in the crowd, INS agents waited. The social services people were on their way, too.
“It’s possible they started out with nine,” Jason said in an undertone, voicing the hard fact
Ethan had been trying not to think about. “They might have lost one on the way.”
An image of Julie floating in the cold depths of the ocean flashed through his mind before he could shut it down.
“Let’s go with the best-case scenario,” he ground out. The ninth girl could still be alive. Perhaps she had gotten sick and had been separated from the others to avoid spreading disease.
Or she’d been taken out of the hold for someone’s amusement…
Ethan stared hard at the line of men still on the floor. The smug bastard who’d laughed—he was going to pay for that now.
Ethan thought fast. They would take one girl out at a time. Even if these shitheads hadn’t cared for the girl’s comfort, they would have cared about their own. Most of the cabins were doubles or triples, but one of the berths had a single bed…
“Hey, we found the last girl!”
Ethan followed the shout, leaving the rest of the victims in Jason’s care. He was back on the boat in a flash.
One of the team, Smith, pointed down the hall.
“She ran past me. I think she was loose when the ship docked.”
Ethan grunted, waving the guy past. “Hello?” he called in Russian, taking a chance. The boat may have been Croatian, but he got that note from Viktor, he was sure of it now.
He could see her now, a little slip of a thing wearing a thin white shirt and jeans that hung off her. She was huddled in the corner of one of the sleeping quarters as if she were trying to hide.
“Hey there. I’m with the FBI,” he murmured softly, holstering his weapon.
That was a mistake. It should have been safe. The entire boat had been cleared, but some of those damn smuggling holds were craftily hidden. And, apparently, some were large enough for a full-grown man.
He felt a rush of air on his back right before a pair of fat wide arms clamped around him.
Reacting instantly, Ethan threw himself backward, slamming his attacker against the wall. There was a loud crack as the attacker’s head slammed into the metal. Ethan shook the man off, but the shit took hold of the strap holding his shield on the way down.
